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THE CRAFT OF THE TORTOISE 



THE CRAFT OF 
THE TORTOISE 

A Play in Four Acts 



BY 

ALGERNON TASSIN 






■/■M. 



BONI AND LIVERIGHT 
New York 1919 



?>^ 






N^ 



COPTEIGHT, 1919, 

BONI AND LIVERIGHT, Inc. 



Copyright also in Great Britain and Ireland and in all 
countries subscribing to the Bern Convention 



DEC -6 1919 



This play in its printed form is designed for the reading public only. All 
dramatic rights in it are fully protected by copjTight, both in the United States 
and Great Britain, and no public or private performance — professional or amateur — ■ 
may be given without the written permission of the author and the payment of royalty. 
As the courts have also ruled that the public reading of a play for pay or where 
tickets are sold constitutes a performance, no such reading may be given except 
under the conditions above stated. Anyone disregarding the author's rights renders 
himself hable to pro^egutioQ. Communications should be sent to the author, care 
of the publishers, 



©CI.A535 94 3 



PREFACE 

The tortoise of the fable finally won the race for two 
reasons. The major one was preeminently masculine; 
the minor one was preeminently feminine. 

Although the hare himself in a moment of contemptu- 
ous boasting had suggested it^ the idea of their being 
pitted against each other was so ridiculous to a person of 
his nimble legs that he looped all over the adjacent ter- 
ritory and then took a nap. He felt confident that when- 
ever he elected to return to the course he could easily 
whisk in ahead. Thus it was not at all that he disdain- 
fully tossed her a specious advantage by this gallivanting 
(as is the habit of his human prototype) ; or that he de- 
sired to throw in for the benefit of the sole spectator a 
few pyrotechnics (also a mannish characteristic) ; or 
even that he tried to stimulate his own languid interest, 
in a race so one-sided, by developing an artificial excite- 
ment (which would have been behavior eminently 
human) . It was merely that the thought of her as a real 
competitor never entered his silly head. 

Those possessing the confidence of an enormous ad- 
vantage, as ^sop would say, have ever underestimated 
not so much their competitors as the difficulties in the 
way of recovering lost time and making a brilliant last- 
moment finish. The idea has ever intrigued the vigorous. 
Indeed, it lends the crowing exuberance to vigor, this 
feeling that there is plenty of time for the final easy 
demonstration of one's superiority. Nor can it be denied 
that to make the grand tour yet win the race at the same 
time is the summum bonum of human existence. 



yi Preface 

That is possibly the reason why the deathbed repent- 
ance occupied for so many centuries the principal place 
in the imagination of the Christian church and actuated 
so many of its forms. Not only had Holy Writ fur- 
nished instances of the most colorful and romantic na- 
ture^ but many of its soberer teachings were calculated 
to enhearten the philanderer who would throw himself 
panting and victorious over the line at the last moment. 
If the wages of the eleventh hour servant equalled the 
wages of those who had borne the heat of the day, why 
report for duty any earlier than necessary? If there is 
less joy in Heaven for the ninety and nine that need no 
repentance than for the one sinner that returneth just as 
grace is finally over and the meal is being spread, why 
not contribute noticeably to the delight of the angels ? 
Especially as, the passage hinting substantially at bore- 
dom, it would seem prudent to enter so permanent a com- 
munity not only as the welcomest of citizens but with a 
reputation already established as a dispenser of smiles 
and an enlivener of tedium. 

To men as to angels the plodder has ever been unat- 
tractive. Terrestrially speaking, only in human society 
is the drone encouraged. In school and college, the 
children of the species delight to dub him "greasy," an 
epithet so loose as to seem picked for its opprobrium. 
In maturer social circles, the thoughtful spender laying 
foundation for future solidity is stigmatized as a tight- 
wad; and a spendthrift who scatters coin in one's own 
direction is approved by the most hardened of moralists. 
Nor is there lack of scriptural authority. Jesus admired 
the lilies of the field because they toiled not nor spun; 
and he is represented, in the most curious of passages, 
as administering a somewhat ungracious rebuke to one 
of his hostesses, the plodding Martha who looked out 
for his creature comforts, in favor of her sister, al- 
though manifestly the house could not have kept itself. 
Our fiction exploits the prodigal; there is no romance 



Preface vii 

in the ledger^ its balancing or its balancer. The knight 
errant is the pictorial personage, not the knight who 
stayed at home and managed his farm, though there 
must have been several of these unknown to song and 
story. Say what you please, he that kissed and rode 
away has inspired more delightful memories than the 
lover who settled down to the humdrum business of pay- 
ing the rent and feeding the children. Wherever one 
looks, in the teaching of the church or in the sorry habit 
of the world, the dull sensible plodder is discouraged. 

The church, of course, catered to the weakness of 
humanity in this matter; and the prevalence among men 
of this tradition so sedulously cultivated, points to some 
basic reason. May it not be man's elaborate justification 
of his prevailing vices ? For the edifying ending of all 
our novels and plays is simply hoakem; nobody would 
read stories which began as they finish. What we really 
want is the tale of an irresponsible gallivanter who un- 
dergoes a last page conversion to the proprieties we like 
to consider an appropriate influence for the young; who 
breaks every moral maxim except the only attractive one 
setting forth that it is never too late to mend. Even a 
priest finds a sizable sin surprisingly grateful in the 
tedious round of small confessions; and the mildest of 
ministers sniggers when a reprobate hails him as a gay 
dog. The fleeing Joseph is subject for laughing every- 
where but in a book. Here he ceases at once to be 
entertaining, and his thwarting of promising adventure 
becomes an unmixed exasperation. What is the use of 
books, we say, unless they are more interesting than most 
of us allow ourselves to be.^ And as nowhere in life 
are brilliant finishes provided outside of the realm of 
religion, let us minister to our craving and at the same 
time uphold the teachings of the church by providing 
them in literature. For, as some one has remarked, the 
last page conversion is as comforting to all concerned 
as the deathbed repentance. It is impossible to demon- 



viii Preface 

strate its inefEcacy; one has had all the delights of 
the feast while the appetite still remained keen; and the 
eternal verities are reestablished just as indigestion sets 
in. 

Yes^ the tortoise had only the virtue of the plodder; 
and it is of all virtues — where all lack zest to the specta- 
tor — the least colorful. The occasional conflict with vice 
enlivens even the possessor of virtue with a brief ex- 
hilaration, but the tortoise struggles with nothing so 
lively as vice — merely vtdth its juiceless shadow, tempta- 
tion. The only comfort of the plodder, putting aside 
one after another the endless enticements to pleasant loi- 
tering and pleasanter aberration, is to keep the physical 
eye upon the ground covered inch by inch and the spirit- 
ual vision upon the distant goal. The heroism of the 
plodder has never been rightly applauded since it is en- 
tirely unspectacular. It consists not only in rigorously 
shutting out the scenery but in as rigorously closing the 
mind to a recognition that would paralyze all endeavor. 
At any moment the hare may dash joyously back from 
adventure and come rollicking in ahead, cutting the tor- 
toise out of the rewards of the race and of the mani- 
fold privations upon the journey. Yet who shall say 
that this stem limitation of the horizon is a heroism after 
all? It may be only that mute dependence upon fun- 
damental human psychology which still exists among us 
despite the teachings of the church to the contrary. The 
habit of gambolling is not to be put off at will. The hare 
is a gamboler still, even when the tortoise is nosing the 
line. Glancing back from the heights of the beckoning 
adventure, he beholds the tortoise dragging her slow 
length past the stake — yet before her hinderparts are 
well across, he may still crop that biggest daisy just 
beyond and frisk triumphantly in, his victory more gold- 
en that it is snatched from apparent defeat just as um- 
pire fox is about to award the prize. So it is ever with the 
hare, and who shall say that the thought has not buoyed 



Preface ix 

the plodding tortoise from the moment she set out? If 
plodding is the least colorful of the virtues^ it is the only 
one which does not wait until heaven to find its reward. 
Perhaps this is after all the final reason why the tor- 
toise is humanly unattractive. Not only have men and 
theologians got together to belittle her, but the jealous 
other virtues have also entered the social conspiracy to 
cheapen her invariable success. The entire human fab- 
ric saves its face at the expense of the plodder. 

Yet though decidedly handicapped by a virtue 
which we have been taught to detest, the tortoise 
is not devoid of human attractiveness. What is the 
essence of our eternal delight in the tramp, the vaga- 
bond.^ Not that he roams, surely; but that wherever he 
roams he is always at home, and in a house for which 
he pays no rent. To carry one's house on one's back, 
to be able to retire within it upon the slightest threat of 
danger, to drop asleep in one's tracks with perfect se- 
curity from marauders, to extrude oneself delightfully 
in the morning and set off without any formality and 
with the knowledge that one will not have to oust an un- 
welcome tenant at nightfall — all this is a convenient 
union of domesticity and adventure. These are abilities 
which the frisking hare, nay even the stalking lion, might 
covet. Let others burrow or build or search for partial 
security in cavern or crevice, the tortoise is provided by 
birthright with both shelter and armor. And so another 
item of fundamental psychology may have buoyed the 
tortoise in her toilful journey. She came slowly but she 
carried her house on her back. Not for nothing is the 
tortoise in the ancientest mythology the earth-bearer, the 
symbol of the origin of things and their permanence. 
The tortoise, wherever she strays, is an essential house- 
keeper. 

The moral support of a well-fitting back has been 
alluded to by a brilliant lady who understood one of the 
more ob\ious functions of woman's clothes — to humiliate 



X Preface 

her less fortunate sisters. This play develops the theme 
that woman compensated for her bodily inferiority to 
man, which handicapping her in the beginning proved her 
strength in the end, by the utilization of her apparel. 
This armor differs from the shell of the zoological tor- 
toise in that it is not for defense but for offense. Yet 
if not her actual birthright, it was improvised — if one 
may believe the whimsical story of Adam and Eve — at 
most the day after she was created. Let Eve fabricate 
what story she pleased to fob off on the architect of the 
garden, she perceived instinctively that the apparent is 
never as tempting as the suggested. She achieved on the 
evening of her birth the greatest height to which man 
has ever climbed by the painful exertion of his much- 
boasted, late-acquired imagination. No sooner had she 
discovered Adam's invaluable appetite than her intuition 
told her that it would grow listless unless artificially 
stimulated. And she utilized his stupid fear to explain 
her innovation plausibly. That she clad him also, was 
only a further ruse to hide her motive. One may guess 
that she did so reluctantly, with contempt for his hulk- 
ing wits and with much regret for the wise caution of 
concealing her cleverness until she had looked around a 
bit. It was a policy she soon found not worth while to 
pursue. Manifold other clevernesses she has discovered 
since and utilized his stupidity to go on exercising them 
in concealment; but with this, the first-born of her inven- 
tion, she shortly discarded subterfuge and allowed her 
motive to be partially discerned by her mate — perhaps 
because she foresaw he would never have wit enough to 
profit by it or because she perceived at once that he pre- 
ferred artificial stimulation anyway, even if he saw 
through it. 

The woman in her slow race for supremacy utilized not 
only the clothes which she made herself but those which 
society made for her. This play deals with some suc- 
cessive spurts which the tortoise accomplished while the 



Preface xi 

hare was gambolling or napping. It presents several 
women who utilized the draperies of society for their 
personal advantage. For the craft of the human tortoise 
is not only to plod. Every forward inch has been ac- 
complished by trickery also. The long history of the 
selfishness and brutality of men to the weaker sex made 
this the only means of advancement. 

Let it not be thought that this play misrepresents 
that history. An historical fact does not cease to be seri- 
ous because it has now become funny. Nor should the 
farcical interpretation of some of the incidents in this 
play discredit the authenticity of the facts at the basis 
of most of them. Tribes still exist where the warrior 
disdains the menial service of bringing home his kill or 
even feeding himself. Intermittently for a period of 
some centuries in the Middle Ages^ the idea persisted 
that women should conceal their hair. This period has 
been somewhat extended to include the invention of the 
corset^ often ascribed to Catherine de Medici; and this 
innovation has arbitrarily been made to coincide with the 
subsequent invention of the farthingale^ at its height (or 
breadth) under Queen Elizabeth. The priests of the 
Middle Ages are full of censure for the unmanly ex- 
cesses of male attire; and sought to curb them rather 
than the extravagances of women^ which^ long before fluc- 
tuating styles of dress had been even dimly suggested, 
they seem to have given up as a hopeless job. The early 
Christians' mandate against all jewelry and ornamenta- 
tion save in the service of the church encouraged such 
richness of priestly apparel that it was not until late 
in the Middle Ages that the church succeeded in compel- 
ling the clergy to adopt a uniform. By this time also, 
with the political prudence which always marked it, the 
church had extinguished the brilliant career of the Lady 
Abbess. The summary marriage of landed women by 
edicts of the overlord had reached the proportion of a 
scandal and had to be checked, not by the church but by 



xii Preface 

the State, before a less candid civilization adopted the 
more disguised form of succeeding periods. The detailed 
rules and regulations of the Love Game and the serious- 
ness with which these were followed for the moment by 
polite society, the universal practice of the uncommer- 
cialized mistress succeeded by the vogue of the acknowl- 
edged and supported one (followed in a less candid civi- 
lization by the supported but unacknowledged one), the 
absence of social stigma for the illegitimate — all these 
are matters of history. Also they are matters of history 
that can be matched by as farcical beliefs and practices 
which seriously exist today, in their turn to become seri- 
ous matters of farce tomorrow. 

This play shows, too, the power of the church develop- 
ing by trickery as well as the power of woman. The 
career of the one has been bound up in the career of 
the other. The church with its male priests naturally 
took in the beginning the male attitude. Yet priests and 
women early recognized each other as allies ; and in the 
beginning, women were doubtless as scornful of their 
allies as their allies remained until recently scornful of 
them. Their position, function, and vocation in the 
household of the master were similar ; and their opportu- 
nity to play into each other's hands against him must 
soon have been made apparent. The priests, of course, 
had the inestimable superiority in their ability to capi- 
talize his stupid fear, which they soon learned to in- 
crease by mechanical invention. It gave them an un- 
approachable strategic position; but for the rest they 
were dependents like women, existing by his favor and 
feeding. As women's personal function was to serve 
his appetite, so the priest's personal function was to 
serve his vanity. But this was by a most ingenious re- 
move. Just as women were consorts as well as slaves 
to men, so priests were consorts as well as slaves to the 
gods ; and it was to the vanity of these they were os- 
tensibly administering while in reality administering 



Preface xiii 

to man*s. It is not improbable that women learned from 
priests as quickly as from war that they also could ad- 
minister to the vanity of man. Being stupidly boast- 
ful himself and reasoning that the powers of earth and 
air could be flattered or bribed into better treatment, he 
made these men that he could do so with more surety. 
They were men like himself, except, being manifestly 
stronger, he equipped them with more arms and legs 
and other members. Having thus flattered them, in 
time he had the inspiration to flatter himself by pro- 
claiming that they had created him, with the necessary 
exceptions, in their own image — a rather poor flattery, 
as man has always been better than his gods. Their 
go-betweens he treated as a sort of privileged women, 
fearing and yet disdainful of them. Even today the 
peasants of some countries publicly flog their saints 
when they do not bring good harvests or otherwise dis- 
appoint as go-betweens; and even in New York City 
little Saint Josephs are ignobly stood upon their heads 
until they restore lost property. 

If priests did not long remain in their category, it 
was because they early realized that no development was 
possible as long as they remained in the home. Leav- 
ing it, they gradually came to rule men openly although 
never entirely. Yet women, though remaining in the 
home and hence in their category, gradually came to 
rule men secretly although never entirely. Fear was 
the pull in one case, sex in the other. But as the ob- 
jects of fear remained the same and the objects of sex 
kept changing, the priests always had the better of it. 
With the scientific explanation of the physical forces to 
appease which by flattery he invented gods, man has 
found them increasingly inconvenient and largely cast 
them aside. 

That woman, whose function formulated Christianity 
so belittled, has remained more faithful to it would at 
first sight seem an anomaly. Yet the explanation is 



xiv Preface 

not far to seek. Having learned by long experience to 
go around what she could not surmount and make the 
best of what she could not help, she began to derive 
from the very religion that threatened sex many sex 
reactions. This was easily accomplished in that relig- 
ion even in its last evolution had, with its many sen- 
suous accompaniments and mystic symbols, never for- 
gotten that its first ritual was a sex manifestation; and 
the deification of the crucified man of Nazareth with 
its acutely visualized glorification of physical suffering 
actually made the church whose dogma penalized sex 
more sexual than some earlier religions. Social law had 
allowed men sex experience at all times, but as social 
law shaped itself under ecclesiastical influence it al- 
lowed women sex experience only within strict limita- 
tions ; and the excluded woman found a psychic sex life 
in the church, the more as for her had been invented 
a special apparatus in the spiritual bridegroom and his 
bride. All women, too, were glad to revive themselves 
with the doctrine of the church that in heaven (even 
though it admitted no such union, and she must leave 
the house on her back an outworn shell behind her) 
woman would be recompensed for all that a master's 
god ordained that she should forfeit upon earth. 

Of all the non-essential industries of man, god- 
making and war-making have been the most inevitable 
and piteous. They have the same derivation, fear and 
fear-bom swagger; and they have gone hand in hand. 
That gods have always been carried forth to battle, 
proves nothing of course; but it is significant that the 
people at present most politically opposed to war are 
as a class both by profession and accusation godless. 
Nor was the continuous failure of formulated religion 
to set itself against war ever more clearly demonstrated 
than in the inception of the last two religions, Chris- 
tianity and Mohammedanism. The latter held out more 
definite inducements to war than any religion previously 



Preface xv 

contrived. In the campaign document which monastic 
hands made of the teachings of Jesus, he figures as the 
prince of peace who has come to bring a sword upon 
earth. The human intellect is peculiarly at the mercy 
of such naive contradictions as these_, and religious 
utterance had seized from the beginning upon its weak- 
ness for paradox. Folklore early accustoms the childish 
mind to fairies as dainty repositories of unlimited 
power, and, once accustomed to such beloved formulas, 
few people grow so mature as to subject them to im- 
personal inspection. 

The ability of custom to envelop with an endearing 
haze the monstrous, the hideous, the absurd is endless. 
Yet invent a new grotesquerie precisely similar, and who 
so shocked as those who cling most tenderly to the 
nursery.^ A curate will fondly make a pilgrimage for 
the hot cross buns our cunning bakers display on Good 
Friday — surely an inherently shocking thing — when he 
would recoil in horror from a new advertisement of, let 
us say, Easter Self-Raising Buckwheats, Tell such a 
person, if you dare, that the Bolsheviki have made the 
best demonstration of the so-called teachings of Jesus 
since his day, in that they have in a whole-hearted and 
wholesale manner put down the mighty from their seat 
and exalted them of low degree, and you will speedily 
discover that a sentiment hazed by abstraction or hea- 
venly remoteness is one thing, and its concrete and 
localized eruption is another. It is, of course, impos- 
sible that the man who said Render unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that 
are God's should ever have rejoiced in the contempla- 
tion of such indiscriminate topsyturvydom. This per- 
version of his teaching was merely another of the catch- 
all processes by which his utterance was distorted into 
a campaign document which should allure not only paci- 
fist and militarist but free and bond. 

The Christian religion when formulated into a po- 



xvi Preface 

litical engine was astutely calculated^ as has been said, 
to keep the enslaved and woman in subjection and to 
make them accept their lot by substituting credit for 
cash, reward in the next world for endurance in this. 
It was more easily achieved in that the scattered sayings 
of the simple socialistic teacher^ who went about doing 
good and healing people out of the abundance of that 
life which he so confidently asserted and on which he 
made such limitless drafts, were often in the approved 
religious manner, vague and paradoxical. Nor did they 
trouble themselves about consistency (if indeed we may 
believe that any of them have come down as uttered) 
any more than have those of other great energies before 
or since. It is impossible to formulate enough general 
remarks to cover the whole of human activity without 
being inconsistent; and fortunately the great dynamic 
personalities who have tried to do so have never dribbled 
away their energy in mere carpenter work. Thomas a 
Kempis alone, of all the great souls who have spiritually 
energized humanity, is notable for consistency, and he 
accomplished it only by having a harp with a single 
string, the subduing of self. Jesus taught self-expres- 
sion as well as self-mastery; and since he did so, his 
language could without much difficulty be sophisticated 
into a battle-cry. 

Despite the plentiful religious training to which both 
as slaves and women they have been subjected in order 
to increase their submission to man's yoke, women as a 
sex have always been opposed to war. It must be 
admitted, however^ that her penchant for uniforms has 
occasionally led her into identifying the trappings with 
the fimction. Her weakness for masculine uniforms is, 
by the way, very simply explained. They gratify her 
taste for finery without in the least particular allowing 
the individual man any scope for individuality in dress, 
which she jealously guards as her own prerogative; and 
they are at the same time a pleasing evidence of the 
subjection of man to his own institutions which she 



Preface xvii 

herself has always been encouraging as a step to her 
ultimate subjugation of him. War itself she has always 
opposed; and if during all the years of his domination, 
it is not likely that she will care to exert this particular 
mannishness in the day of her freedom. However her 
activities in politics and business may bring her to re- 
semble man in superficial mental and even in deeper 
temperamental qualities, she will never duplicate the 
folly of this, the more obviously devastating of his lead- 
ing industries. She carries her house on her back. She 
will not willingly see it imperilled or the work of her 
body destroyed. It is impossible to expect peace at the 
hands of men; the fierce race-protecting passion of 
women is the only hope of the future as far as war is 
concerned. 

It may be too much to expect that women will long 
defer the attempt to invent a female god. Having now 
political and a partial industrial freedom, they will 
naturally desire to replace a man-made god with one of 
their own. Already there are signs of it. "O God 
which art our father and our mother," was an invocation 
beginning to be heard as early as the middle of the last 
century. The two fashionable recently-made religions. 
Christian Science and New Thought, are women move- 
ments. The first, while it introduced a new life princi- 
ple (or rather an old one which Christianity as an 
engine discarded before it was tried), still adhered 
somewhat closely to the old nomenclature and ma- 
chinery; but the second separated itself still further 
from the last widely successful invention of man in 
the way of gods. That women will succeed in banishing 
what remains of this male despot is devoutly to be 
hoped in the interests of genuine spirituality; but that 
they will substitute for him a female god is just as 
devoutly to be feared in the interests of genuine spirit- 
uality. Nevertheless the evolution is but simple pro- 
gression, from father to father-mother to mother-father 



xviii Preface 

to mother unadulterated. Should women commit this 
mannish stupidity, the spiritual development of the race 
will again receive a check. 

One feels, however, that even this regrettable occur- 
rence cannot plunge us back into the previous condition 
of arrested development. Out of the Orient have come 
all the gods that have endured, and consequently they 
are all orientals. The Christian religion, fastening like 
the two new-made religions just mentioned on a form 
then in vogue, inherited an oriental despot who dis- 
dained a slave as his companion. This was bad enough, 
but unfortunately it straightway fell into the hands of 
emasculate ascetics who feared woman as a companion. 
The Hebraic god was a notably majestic conception for 
its time: his misuse of the all-power with which he was 
endowed by the Hebrews was much less gross than that 
of other tribal gods; and though he was endowed 
neither with all-love nor all-wisdom, he was not 
conspicuously hateful nor short-sighted except as his 
war-making proclivities made him so. Jesus, unversed 
in man's mental habits, was apparently for throwing 
away this conception almost in entirety, but his more 
worldly executives had other ideas. Jesus, the great 
spiritual energy of no locality, did not fear to be a 
companion of women; the orientalized St. Paul did, 
although he had the masculine eagerness to utilize their 
services in the new religion he began to administrate 
out of an energy into an engine, out of a principle into 
a creed, out of an emotion into a thought, out of an ideal 
into an idea. The endeavor to amalgamate the Hebraic 
god with what monkish temperaments interpreted to be 
the god of Jesus had aspects both frightful and ludi- 
crous. The joining of the two in the dogma of the 
church was so crude in places that the seamings still 
leave fantastic gaps. It was an impossible undertaking, 
of course, but so inexacting was a mankind carefully 
swaddled in superstitious ignorance by its exploiters 



Preface xix 

that the combination lasted as long as any other human 
invention when exposed to the mechanical wear and tear 
of progress. To sandpaper down the least jagged of 
the joinings has been the major business of petty ec- 
clesiastical diplomats for centuries^ the roughest of them 
they wisely brazened out by resort to paradox. On the 
whole, it has been a fruitless endeavor to metamorphose 
a god of fear into a god of love. Fortunately at the 
very outset the inherent paganism of Europe proved 
strong enough to enforce many modifications in monkish 
intention; and Christianity as a growing political en- 
gine embodied (with inimitable political acumen, it must 
be owned) what it was unable to obliterate as naively 
as it juggled the Roman saturnalia into the birthday of 
its founder and the plowing feast into Easter — and so 
inexacting is mankind cradled in custom that it occurs 
to few to wonder why Jesus was born upon a fixed date 
and died upon a movable one. Other modifications 
followed as the antique inheritance grew increasingly 
repellent to modern consciousness, but modified by pa- 
gan influences and later by humanitarian ones as he is, 
he still remains a male oriental; and if women misuse 
their new power by inventing a female occidental to 
take his place, it will not however regrettable be 
surprising. 

For the god the monkish fathers finally achieved of 
the rough joining of the Hebraic and the Paulist inven- 
tions was, in spite of several theological and ritualistic 
concessions to sex, the arch enemy of sex love. Jesus 
himself they represented as born of no sex union and 
afterwards, when pagan influences had finally forced 
her into reluctant prominence, his mother also. This 
god cheapened and coarsened, despised and penalized 
the most vital force of life out of which all the others 
stem. The church had even the incredible temerity to 
announce that marriage, which it was obliged to solem- 
nize if it would usurp all the orderly processes of gov- 



XX Preface 

ernment^ but prefigured the mystic union between Christ 
and his disciples — a conception as nauseous as it is 
meaningless. There was no end to the absurdities into 
which it was led in its enforced recognition of sex. It 
was not good for man to live alone but it was better 
if he could do so; Heaven arranged marriages but would 
have none of them; God had pronounced an eternal 
curse against woman for the sex union which was now 
sanctified as a sacrament. To all this degradation 
women submitted^ for nothing was possible save sub- 
mission. Man alone^ with or without the aid of human 
institutions, had been powerful enough to enslave her; 
when he created divine ones, revolt became doubly hope- 
less. Perhaps she recognized dimly that she was not 
the only one degraded. Certainly she recognized as did 
he, and as usual even more than he, that theories were 
one thing and practice was another. For human history 
has shown that women will not endure any yoke she 
really recognizes as a sex to be galling. Sex love went 
on just the same, and had she perceived it to be penal- 
ized she would have revolted. She carried her house on 
her back. Had it been really threatened, her fierce 
race-protecting passion would have made as short work 
of divine institutions as it has of all the human ones 
which menace her in-turning proclivities. 

She did not realize it, however, because just in the 
same way as man made her an accomplice in mutilating 
her body, so he had made her an accomplice in weaken- 
ing her mind. But naturally in this latter process he 
had weakened his own mind also, as if his successive 
religions and the defense of his vices had not already 
done the job sufficiently. The Germans afforded a con- 
vincing illustration that you cannot consistently debauch 
the minds of others without debauching your own. That 
country has the credit of elevating propaganda to an 
exact science in its attempt to subjugate all the other 
countries of the world. But the sexes long ago em- 



Preface xxi 

ployed propaganda in their attempt to subjugate each 
other. What they lacked in organized distribution was 
made up in the universality of their methods^ and they* 
compensated for breadth of invention by the seductive- 
ness of their respective material. Man, for instance, 
for many centuries sowed diligently the quaint notion 
that his honor was in the keeping of his women. It 
was a convenient idea, but apparently he had not the 
faintest suspicion that this left him without any; nor 
of how absurd, if his slave did enshrine his honor, was 
his systematic attempt to deprive other men of the 
honor thus made so all-inclusive. Women in return for 
the sentiments men doled out to them naturally capi- 
talized their chief distinction. Among many other 
things, they built up the notion that the automatic act 
of maternity released in them a fund of god-given in- 
telligence, however previously inactive this may have 
been. Apparently they had not the least suspicion that 
men could compare their behavior with that of an earlier 
stage and make up their own minds. Yet absurd as 
the pretension was, it was not only a more prudent one 
than man's but more natural also. For the confidence 
of a peculiar possession always gives an hallucination 
of some magical property. It is not long since Ameri- 
can congressmen as a body believed that an immigrant 
underwent similar intellectual expansion upon touching 
the free shores of America. Apparently, delivering a 
child and coming down a gangplank confer in them- 
selves little mental or spiritual development. Thus if 
the vote has not purged congressmen of this human 
idiosyncrasy that there is some inherent magic in a 
distinctive possession, we cannot expect that it will make 
women relinquish the idea that maternity potential and 
actual has made them finer and better vessels than men. 
The first decades of suffrage will doubtless be marked 
by destruction and chaos. Woman must not only go 
through the half-slave period but through the period of 



xxii Preface 

swaggering self-consciousness of freedom — through 
both of which we have seen the emancipated negro 
passing. It is to be expected that in these two periods 
everything that is petty and dishonorable in her heritage 
as slave will come to the surface. The slow education 
of responsibility may skim it ofF^ as it is doing with 
the negro slave enfranchised. Providing of course that 
with equal steps man shears away the remnants of his 
age-long attitude of slave-owner. Brutality has made 
women brutal^ exploitation has made them exploiters, 
calculating deference has bred equally calculating sub- 
mission. In addition to these inevitable reactions, she 
has the ferocity and the inability for abstract considera- 
tions of justice which go with the house-carrier. This 
is the armor of Nature; and man's regulations — of the 
fatuous injustice of which he has at last grown semi- 
conscious — have sharpened for her the only weapons at 
her disposal, trickery and sex-exploitation. She cannot 
on the instant lay down her arms even if she wanted to 
do so, and the majority of women will not want to do so. 

They will naturally insist upon holding fast to the old 
and grasping the new at the same time. To expect them 
to do otherwise is to grant women a power of reasoning 
which men have never possessed. On the whole, the 
chief woes of mankind have come from seeking to graft 
the new and living shoot upon old and rotten stock. 
They have continually carved out golden figure-heads 
only to set them upon bodies of clay. But aside from 
human habit, there is a particular reason why women 
will not willingly abandon what they have got and will 
exhibit in the next few years their pettiest features. At 
this moment women are at their trickiest because they 
are playing for their largest stakes. 

The final years of woman's enslavement gave her, 
— in all respects but the most important one of sex- 
experience, which indeed it curtailed — the greatest priv- 
ileges she has ever known. The so-called age of 



Preface xxui 

chivalry^ while it allowed her sex-freedom in fluctuating 
degrees^ allowed her little else but sacrificial garlands. 
The vow of voluntary personal service which the mem- 
bers of the Knights Guild took upon themselves along 
with other vows which had the priority, furnished ad- 
mirable copy; but we may be sure that the generous 
deeds it gave room for figured more in literature than 
in life. Chivalry was as hollow a pretense as the 
equally vaunted protection which the church afforded 
women in marriage. Man still made a pawn of her, 
and the church substituted annulment for divorce with 
results equally satisfactory to him. There existed no 
general legal and social privilege for women, nor did 
one ever exist until the latter part of the 19th Century. 
Then, in spite of her political and occasional legal 
disabilities, women suddenly received social privileges 
before unheard of. Particularly was this the case in 
America, where her easy arrogance became the amaze- 
ment of European men, more externally deferential and 
far less complaisant. Her privileges were most ap- 
parent in the courts, where they should have been least. 
The evidence to secure her conviction must be several 
times stronger than that which would suffice for a man; 
a male thief was a thief, a female thief was a klepto- 
maniac. In most cases for murder she was acquitted or 
received a nominal sentence; and if by chance the death 
penalty was returned she was generally reprieved; if a 
woman murdered a man it served the brute right; if a 
man murdered a woman she was always his victim; 
while men could murder men with impunity if they could 
plead the unwritten law, they could not with equal 
safety murder their wives who had been unfaithful. 
In society as before the law, wherever moral responsi- 
bility was in question the assumption of mental and 
moral inferiority was invoked not only by wishy-washy 
public opinion but often by the offender herself. Yet 
she immediately discarded the assumption when the 



xxiv Preface 

stakes were won. Like Lady Macbeth, women allow 
their nerves to overcome them only when weakness is 
the trump card. In nature there exists nothing so 
preposterous as aggressive weakness; it is a latter day 
invention of civilization, the disconcerting result of the 
humanitarian sentiments we have been inoculating our- 
selves with for a century. But the cannon by which we 
have leveled many of the most odious of time-honored 
institutions has a back kick which threatens to work 
almost equal havoc with justice. For might makes right 
we have substituted weakness makes right; and weak- 
ness real and simulated has hastened to take advantage 
of the equally absurd axiom. The purely social exac- 
tions of woman are too many to speak of, but are 
perhaps nowhere so apparent as in the least grievous 
of them. Just why woman thinks herself degraded by 
the removal of a man's coat in summer is possibly 
worthy of extended psychological research. It is not 
even a matter of dishabille. A lady of the shirt-waist 
era with neck turned in and sleeves rolled up on account 
of the heat would passionately object to a man clad in 
a similar belt and shirt and with cuffs and collar and 
tie all in proper position; and the several attempts of 
the timid male assisted by haberdasher's specialties to 
adapt his costume to our semi-tropical summer climate 
have been easily frustrated by half-naked women. Thus 
from society's highest manifestation of order — when 
human life stands before its elected tribunal — to the 
smallest instance of daily behavior, women have of late 
enjoyed social supremacy. 

It is not to be expected, then, that they will discard 
more privileges than the world ever oiFered them before 
now that they have their rights. Some few women 
leaders have scorned to be privileged, it is true, but 
suffragists as a class have eagerly taken advantage of 
every privilege while clamoring for their just rights. 
In England and America they have attacked policemen 



Preface xxv 

and cried *'Shame_, would you strike a woman!" In 
both countries they have utilized sex appeal as well as 
sex immunity and dressed for legislatures as they ges- 
tured for juries. Also they have shown themselves as 
an organized body to be what every wise man knew 
them to be as individuals^ keener and cleverer than men 
in getting their own way. In England they have sys- 
tematically committed acts of violence and claimed ex- 
emption from prison regulations as political offenders; 
in America they have invoked State rights when they 
served and repudiated them when they did not serve. 
It is a rash man who will engage that the cleverness of 
women will not next be turned to the invention of some 
pretext to retain their privileges and exercise their 
rights at the same time. The course of the Suffrage 
movement indicates plainly that what woman wants is 
entire legale political^ and industrial equality but not 
social equality. The social supremacy conferred upon 
her in the latter half of the 19th Century she is 
anxious to keep. Like the enfranchised negro^ she will 
want to go on helping herself to her ex-master's goods 
when she is getting her wages. 

Certainly men cannot prevent it as long as woman 
is willing to exploit her sex. Unless_, indeed, he re- 
taliates by systematically exploiting his own. That 
this, common enough in individuals, is unthinkable in 
men as a class is high praise for the honor which men 
as a sex have been able in some fashion to scrabble 
together in spite of the absurdities and brutalities of 
their sex pretensions. Even if it is only the result of 
their male egotism and of their economic freedom, it is 
still commendable. The remedy, if woman cares to 
apply it, is in her own hands. All that men can do is 
to hasten the day when she shall care to apply it, by 
washing himself clean of all traces of slave-owner. 
These are many and prominent, although on the whole 
they are not so important as woman's heritage of slave. 



xxvi Preface 

From the bondage of each the real emancipation is a 
spiritual one. Slave-owners cannot cease to be slave- 
owners by fiat any more than slaves can cease to be 
slaves. 

Man's unreasoning sense of property in woman will 
persist as long as woman remains his accomplice in the 
denial of her right to sex experience. He demonstrated 
his proprietorship in her chiefly by denying her sex 
experience except under conditions laid down by him- 
self. He actually attempted to convince the house- 
carrier that she had no sex needs until he gave the word. 
Fortunately for the future of the race, men as well as 
women, his overweening project was defeated by his 
own dishonesty. While he established this right with 
his own women and made it theoretically the law of 
society, he was assiduously undermining it all the time 
with the women of other slave owners and convincing 
them that they had sex needs to which he alone was 
fitted to administer. A male Penelope, he unravelled 
at night what he reconstructed by day. Otherwise, the 
notion might have been permanently implanted in 
women. 

Until sex equality exists, the sex antagonism which 
makes women as a class fiercely glory in exacting privi- 
leges from man will continue to exist. Her notion that 
women are socially superior is as destructive as was his 
notion that women were in all ways inferior. Men in 
according women their political and industrial equality 
have banished the latter ; only women in according them- 
selves sex equality can banish the former. The right 
of sex experience need not be exercised by the individual 
woman any more than it is by the individual man if he 
elects otherwise; it is the exterior denial of that right 
which embitters and devastates the adult woman even 
when she knows it not. Men, it seems, are always 
perfectly willing to accord the women of other men 
sex equality as regards themselves; it is only with their 



Preface xxvii 

own women they hesitate. But even if man brought 
himself to consistency in this respect, his history in 
sex matters since the days of Adam is too puerile to 
give him any authority. It is woman alone, whose fear- 
built opposition to sex equality counts. In at last 
going where she pleases to marry, she has again taken 
a step towards sex equality — although neither she nor 
man perceived it when during the nineteenth century 
this became one of her new privileges. To take the 
remaining steps she must banish the whole sentimental 
and moral machinery by which man finally converted 
her into his willing slave. It all belongs to an era 
when man disdained a real union with a dependent and 
desired only some external accompaniments to that 
union. The external accompaniments increased with 
his increasing recession from the idea of woman merely 
as property. First a slave, then slave and toy, then 
companion. But, except with individuals, the last is not 
yet in marriage; nor can be until sex equality exists. 
Now that woman possesses rights and opportunities 
which technically at least approximate equality, civiliza- 
tion faces its best chance for real progress. The wings 
of the golden opportunity will be clipped if women 
utilize it with the stupidity, dishonesty, and commercial 
calculation which man has invariably exhibited in hand- 
ling his own innovations, or if they insist upon retain- 
ing in their freedom sentiments and ideas inculcated by 
their servitude. 

But it is idle to pretend that women are not capable 
of doing so, once that they see that their privileges are 
involved. For even if they had not become by civiliza- 
tion inherently tricky, they are by nature incapable of 
abstract logic. It is true that by virtue of the house 
upon her back woman has always had logic enough to 
perceive when man is illogical and to take advantage of 
it, but this is the very reason why she fails to perceive 
when she is illogical herself. Enough for her the logic 



xxviii Preface 

of going on and of carrying her house with her. If 
this be thought inadequate for politics and industry, she 
can at least retort, Tell me when man has exhibited so 
much? Since first he yielded to fear and invented a 
god and then sought to bluster it out by making other 
men fear him in battle, man has not much to say by 
way of rejoinder. He can be logical enough upon 
invented premises, but the house on her back gives 
woman real premises to look after. Certainly, to those 
who used to say that woman's place is the home she 
suddenly invented an answer as triumphantly logical in 
its illogicality as anything could well be. To be sure 
it is, cried she, and woman carries it about with her 
wherever she goes. 



THE CRAFT OF THE TORTOISE 



CAST OF CHARACTERS 

ACT I. — ^The Tortoise Finds Herself 

Ak, Priest of Silwa 
Mart, of Silwa-Land 
Em, of Mokwa-Land 
OoD, of Silwa-Land 
Garth, of Silwa-Land 
Mart's boy 
Women — men — boys 

ACT 11. — ^Tortoise Turns the First Corner 

Akra, a Neophyte 
Odena, the head priest 
Maga, second priest 
Emla, the head wife 
Marta, the second wife 
Garthus, the patriarch 
Other wives, head-slaves 

ACT III. — Tortoise Strikes Her Gait 

Martha de la Garthelaud, the lady of the castle 

Emelie 1 

Blanche /^^^^^"^^^^^ 

Liane Sans-Ceintre ^^ 

Heloise, Abbess of St. Deniers / ^^ ^^^ ^^® 

Guillaume de la Garthelaud, her husband 

AcRiNUS, Bishop of Orleans 

Rudel, a troubadour 

Hugh de Losan, an esquire 

Jean, a farm hand 

Nurse 

Other damsels, young men 



Cast of Characters 



ACT lY. — ToETOisE ON THE HoiiE Steetch 

Gareth Gaeeity 
Me5. Botee 
Edmitnd Atein-sox 
Me3. Martha Gaeton 
Emmeetne: Aecheb 

Tlie cast requires tidrteen people and some supers. 
The parts bracketed below are intended to be played bv the same actor 

Maet 1 Gaeth ] Ak ] 

!Maeta I GiJETHrs i Aktra 1 

Maethe I Dl LA Gabthelaud ! Acsixrs [ 

Martha J Gaebitt J AtkesSon j 

OOD \ LlAN~E \ 

Odena J Mrs. Boyeb j 




ACT I 

THE TORTOISE FINDS HERSELF 



THE CRAFT OF THE TORTOISE 

ACT I 

The Desert of the Three Oases 

A rocky place with the desert beyond, seen through the 
tops of a clump of cocoa-palms. From the Right, a 
ledge of rocks leads upward until toward the Left it falls 
away abruptly. Issuing from the base of this cliff is a 
spring, surrounded with reeds and rushes. The spring 
is banked up in front by human labor. Beyond the 
spring the forest begins. 

When the curtain rises, there is standing stolidly at 
the extreme Left of the stage a group of women. They 
are clad in a coarse brown earth-colored garment which 
hangs stiff and unbelted from the neck to the ankles, and 
hobbles the legs. Their arms and feet are bare. They 
have wooden buckets on yokes, and are waiting until the 
spring is mended. From the ledge two women are stag- 
gering under a stone slab. An overseer is urging them 
to their work with a lash. He is young, slender, ef- 
feminate, and crippled; his robe is of brown stuff like the 
women's but is short and is caught at the shoulder by a 
thong, giving a resemblance to\ a skin. As the women 
labor with the stone, one of them falls with a grunt. 
The stone falls with her. 

Ak. There ! {He strikes the woman with his lash 
while the other stands stolidly.) Up! 

{The woman rises with difficulty and makes a sign 

3 



4 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

that she has hurt her leg. It gives under her as she tries 
to move. The overseer again strikes her as she turns to 
him with a sign of supplication. She tries to move and 
again her leg gives under her. He pushes her out of the 
rvay with a grunt of disgust, and she falls. He comes 
down to the group of women who have been watching 
this with indifference and singles out the strongest and 
the tallest of the lot.) You. 

{The woman takes off her yoke and goes silently up 
the ledge to the stone slab. She raises her end of it, but 
the other woman is not strong enough to raise hers. The 
overseer after assisting her with a lash or two, singles 
out another woman from the group to aid her. The three 
bear the stone down and put it into place by the earth 
embankment of the spring.) 

Ak {standing upon it and looking into the spring). 
There. Now dip carefully^ the water must be kept clean. 
Or there will be lashes for you all. 

{He goes out Right over the ledge, looking at the 
prostrate woman as he goes and giving her a contemptu- 
ous shove with his sound leg. One by one and mechan- 
ically, the women go to get the water; they dip it into 
buckets and pass out Right.) 

Mart {slowly raising herself to a sitting position 
and looking after him, and speaking dully when he is 
out of ear shot). May the lion claw your heart out, if 
ever he leaps again ! 

Em {who, after setting the stone in place, has not 
joined the others with her yoke of buckets, has now come 
to her to help her to her feet). He hunt with the men.^* 

Mart {as she rises and tries her leg). Once — be- 
fore you came. But he never had a hunter's heart nor a 
hunter's kill. His place was always here among the 
women. {She stands doubtfully upon her leg.) 

Em. The bone? It is not broken.'' 

Mart. No. But there is a knife in it. 

Em. The pain will go. 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 5 

Mart (with some dull gratitude). They do not ask 
if my bone is broken. 

Em (as if in explanation). It is their work. When 
their work is done^ they only drop and sleep. Like fallen 
logs. 

Mart. Have you, too, not always worked? In the 
land whence they brought you } 

Em. Who should work but women ? We have not the 
eyes to track the beasts or the ears to hear the snap of 
the far-ofF twig. 

Mart (still in a voice without vitality hut with more 
emphasis). Are my man-child's eyes and ears sharper 
than hers who bore him? No, they are trained to see 
and listen, that is all. To-day, when he can scarcely 
walk alone, they have taken him into the forest to teach 
him the language of the beasts. But for my woman- 
child there was only work. She must pound the meal, 
first with the small stone, then with the larger. Until 
she is big enough to fetch water also. How are we dif- 
ferent that we must do naught but work? 

Em. Who should work but women? So speaks the 
Man-who-keeps-Mokwa-from-anger. 

Mart. Mokwa ? 

Em. He is the god who sends the terrible noise and 
the sharp light and the great wind. They are his yawns 
when he wakes up. (Proudly.) This man has found 
out how to sing songs to Mokwa so that he will not wake 
up. It is best when Mokwa sleeps. For Mokwa is big- 
ger than men, and instead of two arms he has seven. 

Mart. And this man? 

Em. He alone has seen Mokwa. For this, he is very 
wise and knows why things are. He says that women 
were made to work and men to hunt and kill. That is 
Mokwa's desire. 

Mart (bitterly). Your Mokwa, too! Have the 
gods also women to make their food? Do they, too, keep 
all the hunting and killing for themselves ? 



6 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

Em. It is not wise to speak so of a god. He might 
hear you. 

Mart. The cripple Ak who flogs us to work with his 
whip, he could not lift that stone. I could kill him with 
my naked hands. But if I did so, they would kill me. 
Yea, my own man-child, who but yesterday lay a soft 
thing on my breast and sucked, he would stone me with 
the rest if I should lift my hand against a master. Yet 
you and I may only fetch their kill and pound their meal 
and carry water. Why should this be? 

Em. The Man-who-keeps-Mokwa-from-anger says 
the sign is plain. Is it not we who feed the children 
when they are within our bodies .f* Is it not we who 
suckle them.^ That is the sign. Men must hunt and 
kill, women must dig and feed. So the world is made. 
It is the act of a fool to rebel against the way the world 
is made. 

Mart. These gods are all the same. They may have 
more arms and eyes and ears, but they are all men. That 
is why they have made the world so. 

Em. Why not? If they had been women, they would 
have made the men to work 

Mart (eagerly). Yes, yes. And women to hunt 
and kill! 

Em. And men to bear the children also? 

Mart. No, no! It is nice when you have borne a 
child. For a little while — until they have taken him 
away. We may no longer touch our men-children once 
they can walk without us. (Proudly and sadly.) To- 
day my man-child walks alone with the hunters. He is 
so little — he will be tired. 

Em (wistfully). Is it nice to feel them upon the 
breast, Mart? 

Mart. Ah! If they did not beat us the more. Why 
do they beat us the more? 

Em. Because then we must touch their bodies so 
often. Otherwise we should forget it is forbidden. So 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 7 

says the Man-who-keeps-Mokwa-from-anger. 

Mart. Your women? Are they like us in all ways 
then? 

Em. Only you wear this long heavy garment. With 
us^ it is so. {She indicates). 

Mart {with great curiosity, not unmixed with dis- 
approval) . So ? 

Em. They put this on at once when they captured 
me. 

Mart. Then your legs are free? How queer. {She 
steps as far as she can in her heavy garment). I do not 
think I should like it. 

Em. Why do you wear this? 

Mart. It has always been. Silwa commanded it. 

Em. Silwa ? 

Mart. He is our god who gets angry. But not in 
the loud noise and the sharp fire. We do not fear them, 
for without them the land would die of thirst. When 
we have them we say Silwa laughs with his three mouths. 
But when he is angry^ the ground shakes and the smoke 
from his nose comes through the mountain yonder. 

Em. Three mouths and so small a head? If your 
legs were free you could work more. 

Mart. The Man-who-keeps-Silwa-laughing said that 
Silwa would be angry if we made them shorter. It was 
not this man but another. It is now Ak^ liis son, who 
keeps Silwa laughing. 

Em {much surprised). So puny and a cripple? 

Mart {lowering her voice). When this Ak was 
taken hunting he showed a white heart. As he grew up, 
he made no kill. You see he may not wear the skin of a 
beast. The masters were angry at him and would have 
killed him. But his father died and there was no priest, 
and he was better than none at all. Besides, he knew 
what his father had done. Then one day he was seized 
of a lion and went to hunt no more. Now he drives the 
slaves. But since he showed a white heart, he may 



8 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

have no children by them. Lest they all turn out 
women. 

Em. This garment^, it stifles me! I was not sorry 
when your master came and killed all my men. I said^ 
at least it will be no worse. I did not dream that the 
legs would not be free. But all else is the same. Ex- 
cept for Silwa who is angry in the shaking ground, 
instead of Mokwa who is angry in the shaking sky. 
{She looks off.) And there is another desert, what do 
you suppose is beyond that? Other masters and other 
slaves with another god who gets angry still otherwise? 
{She turns suddenly.) Oh, what do we wear there, do 
you think? I wish someone would capture me and take 
me there. Then perhaps I should wear something quite 
different. Poor Mart! Did Silwa command also that 
you cut oif your hair? 

Mart {Somewhat imperiously). No. I have my- 
self cut oif my hair. And the other slaves have followed 
after my fashion. 

Em {With surprise and some contempt). Why? 

Mart. It was ever in the way of the stones as we 
pounded the meal. 

Em. Why did you not bind it up? 

Mart. It was hot upon the head as we worked. 

Em {Shaking down her thick hair which falls to her 
waist). See! 

Mart {indifferently). It is troublesome. It will 
catch and pull. 

Em {stroking her hair). It is so black and it shines. 
I liked it in my other country but here I like it even 
more. Since no other woman has it. {She has sat down 
upon the slab by the spring and now sees a red flower 
growing beside her hair.) Oh see! It makes my hair 
blacker. See, here is another. {She plucks them, knots 
their long stems quickly and places the chaplet on her 
head, a flower at each ear.) 

Mart {quickly). It is forbidden. 



\ 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 9 

Em. Forbidden ? 

Mart. Silwa will no longer laugh if anything bright 
be put upon the body of a slave. 

Em. But my hair is blacker so. {She has plucJced 
another flower and holds it against her hair.) It is 
blacker here than at home. 

Mart, But it is forbidden, I tell you ! 

Em (smiling). Mokwa does not forbid. 

Mart {coming closer angrily, and with a feeling of 
jealousy awahened in her.) You will get us all into 
trouble. We shall be beaten. {She looks at Em threat- 
eningly.) Take them off and bind it up — your overlong 
bushy hair. 

Em {rising and returning her look steadily). I obey 
masters, not slaves. 

Mart. Take it off, I say. {Threatening to strike 
her.) 

Em {holding her easily by her two arms at shoulder 
length). You are a child in my hands. {With a sudden 
change of voice.) Yonder sneaks the cripple. To see 
if you but pretended to be hurt. Fall now in my arms. 
{Mart falls in Em's arms, who lets her to the ground 
and turns to the spring as if for water. Ak enters, and 
reaches Mart just as Em turns hack from the spring 
with a gourd of water.) 

Ak {gazing at her, half in anger and half in fasci- 
nation). Accursed! 

Em {humbly). I know slaves may not drink between 
times. But she has fallen. 

Ak {striking the gourd from her hands with a grunt), 
Knov/ you not the law of Silwa ! No bright thing may 
be put upon the body of a slave. 

Em. Forgive, master. In my country there was no 
such law. {She gazes at him without coquetry but with 
child-like winningness.) 

Ak {gradually lowering -his uplifted lash, and in a 
grudgingly milder voice but with incredulity). In your 



10 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

country slaves may wear bright things? (At the sound 
of his voice she drops her hands, which were about to 
remove the chaplet, upon her head in such a way that 
her arms make a frame for it.) 

Em. Yes, master. 

Ak (violently). I said slaves from other lands would 
corrupt our customs. How else do your slaves differ 
from ours? 

Em. Our legs are free. 

Ak (shocked). Free? Sacred Silwa! 

Em. And our bodies bare unto our waists. (She 
draws her garment tight with her hands, outlining her 
loins. Mart has raised her head from the ground and is 
regarding her curiously.) 

Ak (with an involuntary start). So? (Recovering 
himself.) And this impious garment, it leaves free the 
legs, the legs of a slave? It is against nature. 

Em. It is made of dry rushes. When we walk or 
run, it moves free. 

Ak. Run ! A slave may run ! Have men in your 
country no heads? How then is a master privileged 
above a slave? 

Em. She may not hunt or kill. She may only work. 

Ak. So you have some sense after all. Let me tell 
you that land will perish where slaves may possess the 
rights of masters. Small wonder we could slay your 
weakling men. (Approaching a step.) And these ac- 
cursed garments? How went they? 

Em (repeating her gesture). So, master. 

Ak. And they swayed as you moved ? Swayed ? 

Em. As the wind sways these reeds. (She brushes 
them with her hand.) 

Ak (voluptuously). Ah! (He approaches nearer, 
then turns as Mart rises to her knees. He cracks his 
thong roughly and strikes Mart.) Go! (To Em.) 
You will corrupt all our slaves with your impious cus- 
toms. (He dashes her chaplet to the ground.) Go ! 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 11 

{He drives Mart with the whip and follows her a few 
steps, then turns toward Em.) When the men come 
back from huntings you shall be killed. Meanwhile re- 
turn not to the other slaves^ lest you contaminate them. 
(He approaches nearer and says meaningly,) You shall 
be killed — in the cavern of sacred Silwa. {He turns to 
Mart again and drives her out Right with his whip.) 
Go! A country where a slave may show her legs! If 
she knows she has legs^ she will some time use them. 

{Em watches them out. She picks up the chaplet 
from the ground, regards it thoughtfully, and replaces 
it on her head. She is trying to puzzle out the meaning 
of Ah's evident fascination in her description of her 
attire. She outlines her body with her hands, as in the 
gesture to him, and wonders about it. She goes and sits 
upon the ledge, under the domination of some thought 
she is seeking to fathom. Still speculating, she puts 
back her hair from her shoulders, and grasping her gar- 
ment at the neck she tears it apart down to her breast. 
Again she endeavors to fathom her thought. She rises 
and outlines her body once more. Still thinking, she 
goes and plucks several reeds and disappears bach of 
the spring. 

After a moment of silence, a man's head is seen over 
the ledge of rock at the Right. He looks around cau- 
tiously from side to side, and then he clambers a little 
higher. He slides across the top, so as not to be seen 
against the sky-line, and leaning over the ledge lifts by 
a ring in the top of it a rectangular box wrapped with a 
gray-green covering. This he brings down the ledge, 
still stealthily surveying all sides. He is almost spent 
with fatigue. Finally, he spies the spring.) 

The Man {in a voice parched with thirst, joyfully). 
Water ! {He sets domn the box and creeps down from 
the ledge, toward the opening of the spring. He crawls 
to it and up upon the stone slab and is about to drink. 
Em's face appears through the rushes on the other side. 



12 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

Her hair hangs upon her bared breast and the chaplet is 
on her head. The man draws back and gazes at her in 
silence and in fear. Finally, as she does not move, he 
speaks in a hoarse whisper.) Alone? (^She does not 
speak.) Where are they? 

Em. They hunt and kill. 

The Man {with a grunt of relief.) Hither. {He 
draws back from the spring without drinking. In a 
moment she enters. A belt of plaited reeds is knotted 
tightly around her loins, and she has fringed her long 
garment up to the mid-thigh.) 

The Man {lying back exhausted). Water! I die 
with thirst! 

Em {taking up the gourd from the ground, filling and 
stretching it to hiw,.) Here, master. 

The Man {wondering at her gesture). Water! 

Em. It is here, master. 

The Man {making as if to strike her, but exhausted, 
he calls again weakly but imperiously). Give me — to 
drink ! {She looks at him wonderingly. He signs for 
her to come nearer. She does so, not understanding. 

He goes on more faintly.) Give me {Em timidly 

in mute wonderment holds the gourd to his lips. He 
drinks eagerly but does not move his hands to tilt the 
gourd. He speaks again angrily,) Up ! {She tilts it 
and he drains the gourd.) Ah! Slave, I could have 
killed you for your delay. 

Em. Forgive, master, I did not understand. 

The Man. Would you have a master serve himself? 

Em. In my country and in this, a slave may not 
touch food and drink that is the master's. 

The Man. A man who hunts and kills be so base 
as to feed himself ! What are slaves for ? 

Em. To work and make the food. But we may not 
touch until the master has eaten. 

The Man. I carry food to my own mouth ! Sooner 
death than such dishonor ! Sacred Salwa ! Have your 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 13 

men gourds for heads? If slaves make the food, why 
should they not carry it whither it was intended? More 
water ! (Em dips the gourd again. She approaches 
timidly and is about to hold it to his lips. He jerks 
away impatiently.) Do they teach you nothing? On 
your knees_, slave. That is the way to feed a man. 
{She sinks upon her knees and holds out the gourd to 
his lips. He drinks and removes his face. He looks 
steadily upon her with wonder and fascination, as she 
kneels with gourd outstretched.) Sacred Salwa ! Who 
is god of this miserable country? 

Em. Silwa-who-laughs. 

The Man. Does he command that slaves go like 
this? 

Em. I am a captive slave. The god of my country 
is Mokwa-who-is-angry. 

The Man. Does he command that slaves go like 
this? 

Em. No, master. 

The Man (grunting). Even false gods could not be 
so foolish. Why then? 

Em. I am to be killed when the masters return from 
the hunt. I make myself ready. 

The Man (regarding greedily her partly bared 
breast). Put down the gourd. (She lowers it upon her 
knees.) And so you bare the breast? It is fitting for 
a man, but for a slave ! Do you not fear that Salwa 
will strike you dead for your presumption? 

Em. Only now have I heard of Salwa. Mokwa, the 
god of my country, is not angered at bared breasts and 
legs in a slave, but Silwa, the god of this country, does 
not smile at either. How then do slaves go in your 
country, and at what is your god pleased? 

The Man. With bare legs and arms of course. 
That she may work the better. But the breasts, never? 
It is sacrilege. Cover your breast. It is unseemly that 
I should look upon it. 



14 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

Em {drawing her hair over her hosoim). Yes^ master. 

The Man (pointing to the boa;). Fetch me that. 

Em. Yes, master. (She rises and brings the box to 
him J holding her hair fast with one hand.) 

The Man {beginning to unwrap the gray-green web- 
like cloth). Think not that I debase my fingers with a 
slave's labor. This is the bird-net of the man-who- 
keeps-Salwa-from-snoring. He is the priest of Salwa, 
and it is not fitting that a slave should touch the net. 

Em. No_, master. (The Man having unwound the 
net, Em leans forward eagerly to look at a crude wooden 
cage in which are two crimson birds. As she does so, 
her hair falls away.) 

The Man (involuntarily , as he sees her) . Ah ! 
(Sternly.) Cover your breast. It is not seemly that I 
should look upon it. 

Em (drawing her hair together again). Yes_, master. 

The Man. The Priest-who-keeps-Salwa-from-snor- 
ing is a very wise man. Nevertheless Salwa often 
snores in spite of his efi'orts, for Salwa has seven noses. 
But the priest is a very wise man, and to him the snores 
have language. Last time they bade him fetch birds 
with blood-colored wings to be sacrificed alive to Salwa, 
and then he would stop snoring. In my country there 
are no birds with blood-colored wings. But across the 
desert, beyond this miserable land there is a country 
where such birds live. I am a great man, I. The legs 
of Ood the magnificent are tireless. They are legs of 
cocoa-trees. I can go in the desert for nights without 
thirst. Even my spittle is more potent than the spittle 
of other masters. There is a spring within my throat 
that will not dry. So who but I should be chosen of 
the priest of Salwa to cross the desert that lies yonder 
between my country and this, and to cross the desert 
that lies yonder between this country and that, and cap- 
ture the birds with blood-colored wings which will stop 
Salwa from snoring? Who but I, Ood the magnificent! 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 15 

{He looks around cautiously.') Am I — are we safe here? 

Em. Only once a day do we draw from the sacred 
spring. No one will come until the masters return from 
hunting. The other slaves may not come nigh me_, for 
I have put bright things on my body. 

OoD. Place then one end of the cage in the spring, 
so that the birds may drink. If you think it unfitting 
that you a slave should touch the sacrifice to Salwa_, 
know that as yet the birds are unaware of the high 
honor awaiting them. 

Em. Yes, master. 

OoD. Stay. Within my breast there is a pouch with 
meal. You may have the honor to thrust in your vile 
hand and take out a few grains. Sprinkle them on the 
floor of the cage. 

Em. Yes, master. {She approaches timidly, while 
the man never lifts his eyes from her breast. She takes 
the cage and puts it in the rushes, which hide it from 
sight, and sprinkles the meal upon it.) 

OoD {as she is doing this). Be not emboldened by 
my favor, only it is not fitting that a master feed a bird. 
It is less unseemly that a slave should touch a master 
than that a master should feed anything. {As she 
kneels before him.) What do you want.^^ 

Em. To be beaten, master. I have touched your 
sacred person. 

OoD. But I waived my rights. I told you to. 
{Grandly.) You are forgiven. 

Em. In my country and in this, when a slave has 
touched the sacred person of her master, she is beaten. 

OoD. And in mine also. But the masters of both of 
your barbarous countries have no nice distinctions. 
They have gourds for heads. And their gods are no 
gods. What are their silly names? 

Em. Mokwa-who-is-angry and Silwa-who-laughs. 

OoD {mimicking). Mokwa, Silwa ! Their very names 
show it. How long, O mighty Salwa, wilt thou endure 



16 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

these false gods ? Raise your hands, slave, and pray to 
Silwa -who-snores. 

Em. a slave? It is not fitting. 

OoD. Not fitting! Do you, a slave, dare tell me 
what is not fitting! They have no sense of fitness any- 
where but in my country. Do as I bid you. 

Em {still on her knees, raising her hands). O Salwa 
who snores ! 

OoD (staring at her breast greedily as her hair falls 
away). Come with me to my country. You look a slave 
who would not drag the feet of a man. 

Em (eagerly). Yes, master, I am strong. Now my 
legs are free, I can go swiftly. 

OoD. I am a mighty warrior and I have killed many 
masters. I am six masters in one, for the slaves of five 
have I and I am the sixth with slaves already of my 
own. Was there any such in the country of your miser- 
able Mokwa.f' 

Em. We had no separate masters. All were our 
masters. 

OoD. Had they gourds for heads? How could they 
know who was the greatest fighter? 

Em. Mokwa commanded that they be held in com- 
mon, and all live in common. 

OoD. Your Mokwa is a fool. For why should men 
fight if they cannot bring home trophies or keep them 
when they get them there? No wonder they gave up 
fighting. And so when they came from this country, 
your masters were but babes in their hands. 

Em. Yes, master. 

OoD. I told you your Mokwa could not see the 
length of his paltry one nose. And now since there are 
no more of your masters, there is no more of your Mok- 
wa. Any fool would have known what would happen. 
Men will not fight unless they can have trophies. 

Em. And are women trophies? 

OoD. You, slave^ are the trophy of the weakling who 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 17 

conquered your old master. When you return with the 
mighty warrior who stands before you, you will be his 
trophy. I will make you head slave, and you shall tend 
the others. 

Em (wonderingly) . A slave tend the others.^ Here 
we are all alike. 

OoD (surprised). Who sees that you do your work 
and whips you.^ 

Em. a master. 

OoD. A man who attends slaves, who does not hunt 
and kill.^ Sacred Salwa, that a man should be so de- 
based ! 

Em. He was crippled by the paw of a lion. He 
may no longer hunt and kill. 

OoD. Then he should have been slain. It is not 
fitting that slaves should see a master who has become 
like themselves. What a country ! Have you no sense 
of fitness whatever.^ Come with me to my country. 
There, you will tend all my other slaves and whip them 
as much as you please. There you will have a master 
who will permit you to pray to his god. A master with 
legs like cocoa-trees. Who will permit you, on occa- 
sions and for fit reasons, to touch his sacred person with 
no beating afterwards. What more could you ask? 

Em (joyfully). And the legs are free! 

OoD. You will find we know what is fit for slaves 
in my country. Above all you will have, as you saw, a 
master who will permit you to feed him. 

Em (blurting out with a sudden fall from her eager- 
ness) . But — but to carry food and drink to his lips ! 
It makes a master a child. He is no longer a man. 
Even here we do not have to do that. 

OoD (drily, after a moment of anger). Even here 
you are to be killed. You will like that better? 

Em. Yes, to be killed is better than that. 

OoD (angrily). You and your distinctions! A slave 
has no right to prefer death to anything whatever. 



18 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

Em (timidly). Tliey will come back from limiting. 
I would not have tliem kill you. 

OoD. Kill me? The mightiest warrior of Salwa- 
who-snores ! Your slave-men of this miserable country 
of Mokwa^ or is it Silwa who giggles. Kill me whose 
very sj^ittle is a spring that drieth not! {With a slight 
anxiety.) But I may not venture upon the desert until 
nightfall. Tell me where I may hide until then^ and 
do you steal out in darkness and come with me. I ask 
who have only commanded slaves before, as you have 
found favor in my sight. Is there a place to hide? 

Em. Behind the spring is a cave in the rock. Go 
far within. It is sacred. No one enters but the Man- 
who-keeps-Silwa-laughing. 

OoD. But come with me now. Remember they are 
going to kill you. (He starts for the cage.) 

Em (listening). Go quickly. I will hide it. 

OoD. Come. 

Em. No, I will not come now. 

OoD. Then at nightfall? 

Em. If they do not kill me before, I will come. 

(He goes out Left and is seen in a moment creeping 
bach of the spring. Alone, she listens. She shows that 
although they are coming, they are not yet upon her. 
She goes and takes out the cage, and thrusting her hand 
within draws out one of the birds and holds it against 
her hair. She puts back the bird again and is about to 
take up the cage when her eyes fall upon the bird net. 
She takes it up and holds it caressingly about her, then 
throws it over her head, and goes to look in the spring. 
But she hears the sound of the approaching hunters, 
and taking the cage, goes quickly over the ledge 
Right. 

From the Left come in Garth and several hunters. 
They are each clad in a single skin arranged with a 
thong over the shoulder as was Ak's brown cloth gar- 
ment. They carry a quiver with arrows and a bow. 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 19 

Among them are two or three boys who carry slings; one 
of them is very young. Garth has a stone pick. He is 
a brawny and stupid-looJcing man, with a sluggish voice 
and a slow-moving mind. As they come in Left, the 
women herded by Ah enter and huddle at the Right. 
As Garth enters, they hneel.) 

Garth (intoning zestfully). Bid the slaves bring in 
the kill. 

Ak (to the women, intoning). The master bids bring 
in the kill. 

The Women (intoning). But we have neither eyes 
nor ears to lead us, nor noses to smell the way. 

The Boys (coming past Garth to the middle of the 
stage and droning wearily). O Ak, we will be their 
eyes and their ears and their noses. 

Ak (cracking his whip). Follow, O slaves, the steps 
of the young masters to the game where it lies. 

The Women. The slaves hear, O young masters. 
(They rise and follow the boys out. Then Ak goes to 
talk eagerly with Garth. As Mart limps forward, the 
youngest of the boys turns to lo^k at her curiously. He 
is very weary.) 

The Boy (with some timid and awkward shame). 
You can never walk so far, slave. (Approaching a 
step). You have hurt your leg? 

Mart (falling on her knees impulsively and in grati- 
tude). It is nothing. You are tired. 

The Boy (indignantly). Tired! 

Mart. Let me carry you, my little — master. 
(As the boy comes toward her a step involuntarily, she 
catches at him.) 

The Boy (struggling to free himself). No, no! 
There, you have touched me ! Now you must be beaten. 
(He strikes her and bursting into tears runs out. She 
rises silently and follows limping.) 

Ak (turning from his excited speech to Garth in time 
to catch the end of this scene). I told you what it 



20 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

would be to have a strange slave. She has corrupted 
them all. She must be killed. 

Garth. Too many of our slaves merit killing at thy 
hands, O Ak. I don't mind one or two to keep up disci- 
pline. But there are now over many — who have been 
put to death in thy cave. 

Ak. Give me but her and I will ask no more. She 
will corrupt all if she live. 

Garth. If she die, she will bring us no men-chil- 
dren. Thou takest away our breeders of men-children 
— what dost thou give in return? 

Ak {furiously^. It is your own law. Do you ques- 
tion the right of the priest of Silwa, O Garth .^^ 

Garth (hastily^. I question not. 

Ak. Then she must be killed. 

Garth. Well, after we have had visitors. Since I 
got her, none have passed our village, friend or foe — 
what is a trophy that is not seen? But it is a pity to 
kill her. She is the tallest and strongest of the slaves 
and should bring us fine men-children. 

Ak. Once this mutiny of women begins no man 
knows where it will end. 

Garth. Tomorrow or another day, thou shalt kill 
her. When she has been seen. Instead of inventing 
new rules for slaves to be slain for breaking, why can't 
you think up more things like that Fetching In The 
Kill? It's very stupid when one is not hunting. Little 
things like that make home interesting. 

Ak (^eagerly and greatly struck with his own inven- 
tiveness). Give me her at once, and I'll invent a death- 
ceremony for slaves. 

Garth (plainly tempted). You must give me more 
to do than in the other. 

Ak. Yes, yes. You and I shall do everything. The 
slave shall do nothing at all but die. It would make 
her feel too important. 

Garth. Well, invent it at once and we can run it 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 21 

over. But we will kill her after we have had visitors. 
Meanwhile you may beat her. Fetch her to me. 

(Ak starts to go to look for her. At this moment, 
both see her coming over the ledge. She has torn the 
wings from the birds and has hung them to her chaplet. 
With a knotted reed she has hung the bird net veil-wise 
from her nose down. Eastern fashion. It sways as she 
walks, revealing her legs through her fringed garment 
and a glimpse of her breast. Both men stand back in 
consternation. She walks slowly down the ledge but 
with a firm, free step. In her stark solemnity she is 
almost majestic.) 

Ak (recovering). Blasphemy! {More excitedly to 
Garth.) Away ! 

Garth {stammering). No. Hither^ slave. {She 
approaches and stands. He gazes at her earnestly.) 
Why have you put this — ^this thing upon you? 

Ak. Look upon her not. Silwa will be angry. 
Speak not to her until she goes in a respectable manner. 

Garth. Silence. Why ? 

Em. I would hide my face from the sight of my 
master. Because I have sinned against Silwa in put- 
ting the bright things upon a slave's body. 

Ak. Believe her not. It is a trick. 

Em. I would be seen of masters nevermore — ^until I 
am killed. 

Garth. Take off — that thing. {Em, after a mo- 
ment removes it and lets it fall upon her arm, partly 
draping her legs. With the other hand she sweeps her 
hair across her breast.) Why have you cut away your 
garment from your legs? The legs of slaves have been 
swaddled since the memory of man in the country of 
Silwa. 

Em. I would be killed with my legs free. So slaves 
have been since the memory of man in the country of 
Mokwa. 

Ak. Sacrilege! She says it is better to be killed in 



22 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

Mokwa*s way than in Silwa's ! {He rushes toward her 
with whip raised. Em removes her hand from her hair 
and stretches out both arms to Garth.) 

Garth {recoiling and stammering). Why have you 
bared your neck? Contrary to all custom of slaves since 
man knov7s not in this land. 

Em. I vs^ould make ready for death. 

Ak. Believe her not. 

Garth {noting for the first time the wings). What 
are these in your hair? {Ak is amazed.) 

Em. The wings of the blood-red birds beyond the 
desert. 

Garth. You said she plucked them from the spring. 

Ak. Whence came they? {Em is silent.) 

Garth. Speak ! 

Em. I brought them from my country. Hid in my 
hair. 

Ak. The blood still drips from them. They were 
just torn off. 

Garth. Speak ! 

Em. Two birds lit at the spring to drink. They 
were so weary with the desert I caught them in my 
hands. 

Ak. Where are the bodies? {Em is silent.) 

Garth. Speak! {Em is silent.) 

Ak. Kill her! {He rushes upon her.) 

Garth. Back ! {He pushes him aside.) 

Ak. Would you be defied by a slave? 

Garth {puzzled at himself). We will kill her to- 
morrow — or later. 

Ak. At least I will beat her now. 

Garth {again pushing him aside). No. I will beat 
her. 

Ak {astounded). Sacred Silwa! With your own 
hands ? 

Garth. You will beat her over-much. 

Ak. What has come to you? 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 23 

Garth {puzzled at himself^, I would not have her 
sicken. She is the tallest and strongest of the slaves 
and there is none like her in the land. She must be 
seen at her best. Then when she is seen^ you may 
kill her. 

Ak. But no head-man may come this way for weeks. 

Garth. Then we will go to them. This slave must 
be seen by all. She is taller and stronger than any of 
theirs. 

Ak. She is the same as she was this morning. It is 
the way she goes. 

Garth. The way she goes? {Studying her.) It 
may be. 

Ak. She must take them off at once and put on the 
slave garment. 

Garth. If it be these things as you say^ they will 
deceive the eyes of the other head-men as they have 
mine. I shall have great credit for so tall and strong a 
slave. Leave them on. 

Ak. Leave them on ! Are you mad ? Let but the 
other slaves see her, she will corrupt them all. 

Garth {after some thought). No, I will say that I 
have hidden her face as a badge of her shame. {He is 
triumphant at discovering a reason for having his omn 
uneasy way.) You see, she herself wished to atone for 
her crime. There is no deep-rooted rebellion in her. 
{To Em.) Put on — that thing. {Em resumes her veil.) 
Yes, it makes her taller. I shall have great credit for 
so tall a slave. Besides, it was never done before and 
will attract more attention to her ! 

Ak {controlling his anger and suddenly assuming his 
priest's voice). Silwa will never laugh again. Your 
meal will fail in the drought, your sacred spring will be 
dried up. You shall take no more slaves captive and 
your slaves will fall unto others. Because you have 
permitted the law of Silwa to be broken, these things 
shall be. {Garth wavers and hesitates. Ak seeing this. 



24 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

increases his impressiveness.^ She is the last your 
hands will ever take, unless you now command that the 
priest of Silwa kill her for her impiety. Boast now the 
tallness and strength of your captive, if you will, O 
Garth. She is the last. {Garth is torn between religion 
and desire. AJc^ perceiving his approaching triumph, 
continues unctuously.) Unless Silwa give now a sign 
to spare the life of a slave who has offended him, she 
must be taken to his cave and killed there that we escape 
his wrath. (After a moment in a frenzy.) Kill her if 
there be no sign. Is there a sign, O Silwa? 

Em (after a moment raising her arms in his attitude). 
Master, I hear the voice of Silwa! (They look at her 
in astonishment). In the cavern of Silwa is a captive 
your hands shall take. This is the sign. 

Ak. Believe her not! It is a trick! 

Garth. Small trick in that. We shall soon find out. 

Ak. Silwa speak to the ears of a slave? Why, a 
slave has no ears. 

Em. Send to see. 

Garth (after a moment of indecision, signals to Ah). 
Go! 

Em. It is no slave. He will break this cripple like 
a straw, or else run easily away from him. (Ah who 
is starting to go is furious but nevertheless pauses pru- 
dently. Garth is about to go.) Master, I would not 
have him kill thee. He has legs of cocoa-trees. 

Garth (blustering). The arm of Garth is a lion's 
paw. He will go single-handed. 

Em (with hands uplifted). The Voice! Silwa bids 
thee take others and surround him. And to kill him not 
until the Voice speak again. 

Garth (awed and not at all averse to company). I 
obey the Voice. (He goes Left.) 

Ak (creeping up to her, venomously). If this be or 
be not, yet shall he kill you — when he has made his 
boast of you. 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 25 

Em. Until then, O cripple, limp not near me. For 
before I die at his hands shall you die at mine. 

Ak {stammering). I — I am sacred. 

Em. Not from me. 

Ak. Silwa speaks to me. 

Em. And to me also. 

Ak {^trying to decide what course to pursue). Your 
ears are keen. 

Em. It is the bright things I have placed above 
them. 

Ak {in astonishment, and fearing that they may 
really have conferred some power upon her). The 
bright things ! 

Em. Why should he forbid but for a reason? 

Ak {baffled hut deciding to end her pretensions^. 
There is no reason. 

Em. Lest slaves should hear. 

Ak. But slaves have plucked flowers before. That 
is why I — why Silwa forbade it. No slave has ever 
heard before. 

Em. These come from over the desert. Only these 
have the power. 

Ak {snarling, convinced against his will). The mas- 
ter shall tear them off and your ears with them. 

Em. The blood has dripped within my ears. I shall 
always hear. 

Ak. Silwa shall command to slay you. 

Em. Perchance. But I shall not be slain until I 
am made a trophy. Perchance in the meantime I shall 
hear the voice of Silwa commanding that I slay you. 

Ak {screaming). But I am sacred. 

Em. From him but not from me. I have heard the 
Voice also. 

Ak {rage and fear carrying him beyond prudence). 
You heard no Voice. There is no Voice. 

Em. Were there no Voice, you would have been slain 
long ago when your leg was crippled. Masters should 



26 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

hunt and kill. If you say there is no Voice^ what then 
will keep you alive? 

Ak. You dare speak thus to a master? 

Em {quietly). The Voice shall say to Garth it is 
not fitting that slaves should see a master who has be- 
come like themselves. {Ah sees the point of this at 
once, collapses from his position, limps up and down in 
speechless fury. After a moment he devises a plan and 
approaches her.) 

Ak {cunningly). Listen. Siiwa shall demand that 
you be his priestess. 

Em. Wliat then? 

Ak. Then you will do no work but tend the other 
slaves. {Lustfully.) At nightfall come to me in the 
sacred cavern. There we will plan together the next 
Voice. You and I. Silwa shall so order that little by 
little we shall rule this land. And you shall grind and 
fetch no more. 

Em. If I am free_, O Ak^ I shall not look to a master 
who is no master. 

{Enter Garth and other men bringing in Ood bound.) 

OoD {starting bach at seeing her in the veil and with 
the wings). Sacrilege! 

Garth {jealously). He has not the legs of cocoa- 
trees ! 

Em {hneeling to him with arms outstretched) . I claim 
the sign^ master. 

Garth. You shall not die. Neither now nor next 
week. {Turning to Ood and plunging at once into 
boasting his trophy.) Behold my slave^ the slave of 
Garth the mighty. Who put to death her mighty mas- 
ters one and all. They were tall and strong for masters 
as she is tall and strong among slaves. Their legs were 
like cocoa-trees. 

Ood {angrily). Have you no sense of fitness in this 
barbarous land? Will you allow a slave to bare her 
breasts to you, in daylight and in plain sight? To 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 27 

remind a master of the time when he lay thereon — a 
slave to a slave? {Garth is impressed with this reason- 
ing.) Kill me if you will^ but do not allow all sacred 
custom and fitness to perish. 

Ak (angrily). We'll take care of our own customs. 
Who then is the god of your miserable country? 

OoD {proudly). Salwa-who-snores. 

Ak {mimicking). Salwa ! O Silwa-who-laughs, how 
long wilt thou endure these false gods? You talk of 
fitness and you have a god who snores ! 

OoD {scorning him, to Garth). I am Ood the mag- 
nificent. Take me to the head man of this village. 

Garth. I am Garth the mighty. My arm is the 
paw of the lion. I am the head man of this village. 

OoD. Sacred Salwa ! And you let this weakling 
cripple raise his uncracked voice in your presence? He 
should have been slain when he was crippled. He 
should have been slain before he was crippled. He is 
neither slave nor master. He is an it. 

Ak {screaming). I? The go-between of almighty 
Silwa ? 

Ood {mimicJeing) . Silwa! Almighty indeed — since 
he is served of crippled weaklings, {To Garth). Have 
you^ I say again^ no sense of fitness in this barbarous 
land? Even a false god should have a fit go-between. 

Ak. Kill him! 

Garth. Silence ! 

OoD {shocked). Who is this god of yours that you 
may bid his priest be silent? It is fit to slay him for 
he is an it; but if you let him live^ it is not fit that you 
should silence him. Priests may talk all the time if 
they so desire. I am Ood the magnificent^ you are 
Garth the mighty. We are two men together. Send 
now this it away that we may speak without interruption. 

Garth: {after a moment of speculation, motioning Ah 
to he silent). Speak! He remains. 

Ood. My legs are like cocoa-trees. Even my spit- 



28 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

tie is more potent than the spittle of other hunters. In 
my throat is a spring that drieth not. Therefore, have 
I traveled far and wide across many deserts to many 
lands. I have been to all the lands there are. And I 
tell you that nowhere have I seen a slave who may bare 
her breast before the face of her master. I am about 
to die, but I speak for the future of the race. Your 
god is a false god well served of its, your men have 
reeds for sinews, your arm is the paw of a monkey and 
not of a lion. — still such as ye are, ye are men and mas- 
ters. How long will ye be so if your slaves may mock 
you with a recollection of your time of weakness ? When 
I do not return, my people will come hither and slay 
you all — so that it matters little if your slaves mock 
one month or two. But your slaves will not be slain — 
they will be taken captive. And though they will no- 
where else be allowed to go so shamelessly, they will 
remember and talk to the other slaves. Such is their 
nature. And thus will they corrupt the world and there 
will be no masters on that when all slaves shall remem- 
ber that their masters were once slaves to slaves. I 
speak for the future of the race of masters. A slave's 
breast must not be bared. Her legs, yes. Her breast, 
no. 

Ak. Her legs neither! 

Odd. Silence, it! 

Ak (furiously). How dare you silence me! I am 
a priest. 

OoD. I may silence you, but he may not. 

Garth {puzzled and much interested) . How do you 
make that out.^ 

OoD. He is no priest of mine. What is unfitting for 
you is fit for me. 

Garth (slowly impressed with this reasoning). That 
is very interesting. 

OoD. But I say it is not fit that a god however false 
be served by such a creature as this. 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 29 

Garth. It is not convenient to have a hunter for 
a priest. We need all the men we can get for the hunt. 

OoD. I admit it is not convenient. But it is fit. 
That civilization is doomed which puts convenience be- 
fore fitness. But why waste time speaking to you of 
civilization? You don't know the meaning of the word. 

Garth. What is civilization .f* 

OoD. It is a sense of fitness. And you have none 
whatever. It is by no means fit that I should stand 
here talking to you at all. You should have killed me 
when you took me. Or kept me for torture. Either 
would become us as masters. 

Garth (anxious to explain that he is not so lacking 
in fitness as it seems). The voice of Silwa proclaimed 
that you should be brought before that slave. 

OoD (aghast). Ood the magnificent brought before 
a slave! And this slave who stands there with her 
breast impiously bared^ and thrice impiously bedecked 
in the bird net of the priest of Salwa and his blood- 
colored wings ! 

Ak (eagerly). So that's where she got them. 

Ood. I demand that you strip that slave of the sa- 
cred things. 

Ak. Yes^ take them ofi" at once. 

Ood. On the body of a slave^ the sacred things of 
Salwa ! 

Ak. Sacred? Don't talk to us of what is sacred to 
your false god. What is sacred to your Salwa is not 
sacred to our Silwa. 

Ood (angrily). Your Silwa! Is he a cripple, then, 
that he speaks through cripples. 

Ak (to Garth). Sacrilege! He blasphemes Silwa! 

OoD. Don't be a fool. You can't blaspheme another 
person's god. You can only blaspheme your own god. 
(To Garth.) Do you not see how unfit is this it to be a 
priest? A priest should have more sense of fitness than 
anybody else. That is what he is for. To discover 



30 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

every day more and more things that are unfit. But I 
admit that in a sense he is correct. What is sacred 
to me is not necessarily sacred to you. However re- 
grettable, you are what you are. Nevertheless it is 
not fitting that a slave should wear anything that is 
sacred to anybody, and it is not fitting that a slave 
should wear anything but what all slaves wear. So 
for two reasons, which even persons with no higher 
sense of fitness can appreciate, the things should be 
removed. Take them off. 

Ak. Yes, take them off at once. 
Garth {after a moment of speculation). You may 
take off the red things, but the other makes her look 
taller. I will not have it removed. 

Ak and Ood {protesting). But 

Garth {to Ood). Silence! 
Ak. But hear me! 
Garth {to Ood). Silence him! 
OoD. Silence, it! 

Garth. There is something in this sense of fitness. 
It makes home almost as interesting as hunting. We 
must have a better priest. {To Ah.) You may remove 
the red things. I say you may remove the red things. 
{Ah does not stir.) 

OoD {grudgingly). It is not fitting that he touch 
them. Such as he is, he is the priest of another god, 
such as he is. They will, theoretically speaking, con- 
taminate him. It is well that he should be killed at 
once but it is not well that he should be contaminated. 
A man should have respect for his religion, whatever 
it is. 

Ak {eagerly). Let the slave remove them herself. 
Ood. No, her hands are more vile than her head — 
for she has worked with her hands. {To Garth.) You 
must remove them. 

Garth {indignantly). 1} Remove anything from 
a slave! 




Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 31 

Ak {hastily). No, let him not go near her. 

Garth {indignantly). And why not? Come hither, 
slave ! 

Em {coming and kneeling before him, holding back 
her veil). Master! 

Garth {about to lean over her, is arrested at the sight 
of her breast and gazes fascinated upon it; stammering 
in a dull, dazed tone). What is the harm in these red 
things? They please me in her black hair. They are 
like blood on the mane of a lion I have killed as he 
leaps through the air. {He looks up in bewilderment.) 
This is the first slave that ever pleased me. She is both 
tall and pleasing. 

Ak and God. Close your eyes ! Close your eyes and 
wrench them off! 

Em {as he is about to do so). Master. 

Garth. No, let them remain. {He steps back and 
shakes himself in bewilderment.) 

Ak {prancing up and down). I told you he must 
not go near her. He is lost. 

OoD {solemnly). This land is doomed. 

Ak {suddenly getting the idea that he may save 
the situation by promulgating a Voice, and raising his 
arms in his priestly attitude). Listen! {Em, seeing 
him, rises majestically and raises her arms in a similar 
attitude as she holds his eyes, at which he drops his 
arms abjectly and wails.) Oh, oh! 

OoD {after waiting hopef..Uy though disdainfully for 
his utterance). Well, what does your Silwa say? 

Ak {feebly). Nothing. 

OoD {in disgust). Have you no sense of fitness 
whatever? A x^riest should not make those noises un- 
less his god is about to speak. {An idea strikes him.) 
Why did the voice say I should be brought before 
her? 

Ak. I — I say only what is given me to say. 

God. You are altogether a fool. If the voice said 



32 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

that^ you should have changed it on the way out. Now 
you have made her important. The very first business 
of a priest is to see that nobody else gets importance. 
Now she will ruin you in the end. She is the only one 
of you that has not a gourd for a head. 

Ak. Let us kill her. Think of some way. 

OoD. There is no way. I tell you it is too late. 
{In a sudden outburst to Garth.) Why do you keep 
me a hunter bound like this ? It is my right to be killed 
at once or else tortured and killed by degrees. Kill me 
quickly or slowly as you please^ but begin. 

Em {stretching her hands to Garth as he looks at her 
in bewilderment). No, master. 

Garth. No. 

OoD {quickly in a low voice to Ak, rvho has ap- 
proached still nearer). Kill me. 

Ak. When you have killed her. 

OoD. Have a voice. Let Silwa command that both 
of us be killed. 

Ak {knowing the futility of this). Find some bet- 
ter way. 

OoD {suddenly pushing Ak over with his body). 
There! I have knocked down your miserable it of a 
priest. If there is any fitness whatever in this bar- 
barous land of no distinctions, you head-man of a vil- 
lage and slave to a slave, you must strike me dead. {He 
chants his war song, preparing to die.) I am Ood, Ood 
the magnificent. My legs are like cocoa-trees. In my 
throat is a spring that drieth not. 

Garth {stepping menacingly toward him, brandish- 
ing his pick which he has caught up, and chanting his 
war song). I am Garth, Garth the mighty. My arm 
is the paw of the lion. {He raises the pick and 
squares for the blow.) And its claw is stone. 

Ood {defiantly). Like cocoa-trees are my legs! 

Em {suddenly intervening and throwing back her 
veil). Master. {Garth's pick slowly descends as he 



Act I The Craft of the Tortoise 33 

looks into her face. She kneels before him and stretches 
out her arms.) Master. Keep hira for a slave. 

Garth, Ood, and Ak (in utter amazement). A slave? 

Em. Think how much credit he will bring you. When 
legs like cocoa-trees shall fetch your water, and the 
arms of a magnificent hunter shall grind your meal. 
All through the land will masters marvel at the might 
of Garth the mighty who alone is served by a master 
who is his slave. 

Garth (in bewilderment but under the spell of this 
golden picture). But it was never done before! 

Em (seductively). The mightiest of masters should 
do it first. 

Garth (after a moment, to Ood). Live, slave. 

(It is now sunset. Enter from the Left, the other 
women staggering under their burdens of game. They 
are herded by the boys, who strike them with their 
slings as they stagger, crying, "Up, slaves. On!" The 
women gaze curiously at Em as they plod stolidly across 
the stage and go out Right. As Mart comes to the 
middle, she pauses under her load and looks at Em. 
The two women face each other.) 

Mart's Boy (striking her). On, slave! (She limps 
out stolidly.) 

(Ood, overcome with the enormity of his fate, has 
sunk dejectedly to his knees. Em, turning away from, 
Mart, sees him. She goes to the spring, fills the gourd, 
and gives him a drink. He drinks mutely, his spirit 
broken). 

Garth (jealously). Why do you do that? 

Em. He cannot serve himself while he is bound. 
And you cannot unbind his arms until you have made a 
chain for his legs. 

Garth. Some other slave shall serve him, not you. 
(Approaching and surveying him.) Yes, I shall have 
great credit for a man-slave. I wonder why I never 
thought of it before. We must have more of that sense 



34 The Craft of the Tortoise Act I 

of fitness in this village. When you're not hmiting_, it 
makes home interesting. 

(Meanwhile Ah has gone to the top of the rock, and 
as the curtain falls is seen there sitting disconsolately 
directly over the sacred spring.^ 

CURTAIN 



ACT II 

The Wives of the Patriarch 

A Courtyard paved with stone, surrounded by a 
rectangular stone wall, one story in height. The 
three walls are broken by open spaces, set off by pillars 
— one space in the exact middle, one at right front, one 
at left back. The middle pillars are twelve feet apart, 
the right six feet, the left four feet. All the openings 
have curtains which are now closed — the middle curtain 
red, the right light blue, the left brown. By the right 
and left walls in the front there are entrances to the 
courtyard from the exterior. In the middle is an altar 
of white stone, from which a tiny flame is mounting. 

It is morning twilight. A neophyte in a short white 
tunic enters from the right room. He comes sleepily 
to the altar, makes two genuflexions and symbolic ges- 
tures to the rising sun, and blows out the light. A priest 
appears at the right, robed in white to his feet with a 
blue zigzag band upon the hem and down the middle. 
He and his fellow priest have smooth faces. 

Odena {in the doorway, sternly but in a hushed 
voice). Three! 

Akra {stammering). I did three. 

Odena (sternly). Again! 

Akra. That will be four. 

Odena (coldly, coming out). I watched you. (Akra 
begins another genuflexion and gesture.) Chin up, 
shoulders back, arms together, hands curved! Don't 
wiggle. If you do it right, it is supposed to be ex- 
tremely uncomfortable. Will you never learn the rudi- 
ments of a priest! (He examines the altar») My man- 

35 



36 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

tie! Can I touch the altar before I have my mantle 
on? (AJcra goes into right room, brings the mantle, 
and affixes it to his shoulders.) This new miracle will 
be a fizzle. It will never work in the world. 

Maga (at doorway, yawning). I overslept. All 
night I was boring the holes in the altar. For the new 
miracle. 

Odena (warningly). She'll be getting up. 

Maga {examining the altar). It will be a beautiful 
miracle. My mantle! (Akra runs to get it.) 

Odena. I can beat nothing into his head. (With 
an inspiration.) If he does not improve, he will do 
very well for the first sacrifice ! 

Maga (surprised). He, almost a priest? 

Odena. Yes, it would start the new cust-om with 
distinction. 

Maga. But our next boy might be even more stupid. 

Odena. All the same if he does not improve, we 
shall take him. Goats are losing their impressiveness. 
(Rebuking Akra, as he enters with the mantle.) AVliy 
were you so long? 

Akra. I couldn't find it. 

Maga (busying himself at the altar). Oh, yes, I 
used it to fetch the potash in — for the new miracle. I 
had to steal the key from the head-wife, as she was 
lying asleep on the floor. 

Odena (listening at the middle opening). Not a 
sound. (Coming down, grumbling). What can you do 
without privacy? 

Maga. You see — everything fits. It will work like 
a charm. When the moment arrives, you press the but- 
ton with your knee. The wire jerks the pan with the 
potash, the altar flame flares up blue. It's the best mir- 
acle yet. 

Odena (in admiration tempered with jealousy). But 
we must not work it often or it will lose its impressive- 
ness. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 37 

Maga {proudly). It took many sleepless nights to 
devise how you might press the button yet keep both 
hands in view. It is a wonderful doing. 

Odena. YeS;, yes, you may be good at doings. But 
you know nothing of their inner meanings. 

Maga {angrily). Where would you be without me, 
I'd like to know. Who taught you to impress people.'* 
Who spends sleepless nights thinking out and practic- 
ing new tricks for you? Who taught you that a bone 
may be held in the palm of the hand and disappear up 
the sleeve? 

Odena. Peace, you will wake her. If she sees us 
standing about the altar, she will suspect. {Moving 
right.) When we can have more privacy, we can have 
more miracles. 

Maga {grumbling). Now I must potter about all 
night, while you are snoring. 

Odena. Listen. Now you shall have a workshop of 
your own. Garthus has consented at last to the temple. 

Akra. Garthus? But only yesterday he refused! 

Odena {complacently). Maga may manage sticks 
and stones, it takes me to manage flesh and blood. 

Akra. He said he didn't object to the smell of the 
burnt offering. 

Odena. When one reason is not sufficient, a good 
priest always has another. I told the head-wife that 
we did not really wish to go. A temple of our own 
would inconveniently remove us from surveying the 
household. Consequently she influenced him upon our 
side, not knowing it. She is but wax in my hands and 
he is but wax in hers. He does not suspect that he is 
wax in her hands, she does not suspect that she is wax 
in mine. In time I shall get him to permit human sac- 
rifice. {Gloom,ily.) Otherwise, the day is coming when 
people will weary of us. Goats no longer stimulate the 
imagination. 

Maga. They say that long ago, before the patri- 



38 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

archal era^ people had so much imagination they were 
quarrelsome. They used to fight with each other. 

Odena. Those were the good old days. This slug- 
gish pastoral existence is bad for the imagination. And 
without imagination^ where would we be.^ {With an 
idea.) Could I not persuade her to make Garthus go 
to war? Then^ too^ we should have captives. With 
a little manipulation^ he would soon consent to their 
being sacrificed. 

Akra {glibly). The head-wife has no perception of 
the inner meanings of things. Like all women_, she is 
but a two-legged animal. 

Odena {sternly). You talk like a man and not a 
priest. Only a man says a woman is a fool. A priest 
keeps it to himself. 

Akra {crestfallen). I thought that was what you 
taught me. 

Odena. It is and it is not. I do not know why 
women were created. But were it not for them, men 
would be extremely difficult to manage. I said a priest 
should have a man's contempt for women but should 
display it only with discretion. With him she is a fool, 
with us a fool likewise but a tool also. I doubt if you 
will ever master the subtlety necessary to a priest. 

Akra {taking up his tablet). That is a new word. 
What is subtlety? 

Odena. It is to entertain two ideas at once. 

Akra. How do you spell it? 

Odena. S-u-b, sut; t-l-e, tull; t-y, ti. 

Akra. That is a beautiful way to spell it. 

Odena. When you are priest and come to make up 
words of your own, don't forget the principle ; spell them 
as unexpectedly as possible, especially words referring 
to priests. So that to spell them correctly will show 
one has wasted much time and effort. To return — a 
woman does not count, yet it is always necessary to get 
her consent to everything. But, mind you, you must 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 39 

never ask for it directly. That would make her impor- 
tant. Observe me today when I suggest to her that we 
give up the God of Child-birth. 

Akra. Give up a God.^ I was trying to think up 
some new ones. 

Odena. Decidedly_, I fear you will never have 
subtlety enough for a priest. 

Maga {sympathetically^ . Never mind. That's what 
I thought, too, until he explained it to me. 

Odena. There must be fewer gods instead of more. 
We have at least seven whole gods, twenty half ones, 
and innumerable quarters. They confuse the imagina- 
tion instead of stimulating it. The quarter gods and 
half gods must go, to begin with. 

Akra. Why ? 

Odena {complacently). I thought you would ask 
why. Maga there may spend now and then a sleepless 
night with his sticks and blue flames. But I never sleep. 
Pondering on the inner meanings of things, I live al- 
ways in the future. Not only must the quarter and half 
gods go, but little by little some of the whole gods also. 
For as the small gods distract the attention from the 
bigger, so too many big gods distract the attention from 
us, their priests. Some day, far distant in the remote 
future, there will be but one god. 

Akra. But one? 

Maga. Why is that desirable? 

Odena. I who live always in time yet unborn, have 
a large vision. This pastoral life men lead now is bad 
for the imagination. The lack of imagination is bad 
for us. It is also bad for the men themselves, turning 
them into animals that crop and feed. And animals do 
not desire a god. It is our mission to keep the imagi- 
nation moving. Can this be done continuously by blue 
flames and disappearing bones? You can move the 
imagination only to a limited degree in this sluggish 
pastoral life. Men must go to war with each other. 



40 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

And to do that they must have a war-cry. Gods make 
the best war-cries^ but it is not convenient to go to war 
crying the names of seven gods at once. Therefore I 
shall today set about reducing the seven gods to six. 
My successor may reduce them to five. The ideal will 
come when at last there is only one. One God — that 
will be the perfect war-cry. (Both men are astounded 
at the length of Odena's vision^) 

Maga. Now tell him why you begin by getting rid 
of the God of Child-birth. 

Akra. Yes. 

Odena. First, he is a woman's god — hence he is the 
least important. Second, he is quite unnecessary and 
ought never to have been permitted. Third, 

Akra. Why the second? 

Odena. The third explains the second. But it is 
always well to have things come in threes. Third, a 
woman's children are either male or female. So much 
is granted. {On his fingers.) If — one — it is a male, 
he is already sufficiently looked out for by the other 
gods. If — two — it is a female, it doesn't matter whether 
she is looked out for or not. And — three — the mother 
makes no difference in either case. 

Maga (in admiration). That's what I call a — what 
did you say it was? 

Odena. An incontrovertible exegesis. Unfortu- 
nately, the words, though long, spell exactly as they 
sound. But they are not mine, they date from a more 
primitive time. 

Akra (after writing the words down, sagely hut dip- 
lomatically). Will this exegesis of yours appeal to 
her? 

Odena. You don't suppose I shall give her that one? 
Will you never learn the rudiments of your profes- 
sion? 

Akra (turning away uncomfortably, he sees the hack 
curtain flutter). She is getting up. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 41 

Odena. Quickly! (They hurry into their room and 
close the curtain softly.) 

(It is nom dawn. Emla lifts up the bach curtain and 
appears. She is dressed in a plain, loosely florving dark 
robe which suggests the Greek. Yawning, she sits upon 
the stone bench to the right of the curtain. Here she 
nods and after catching herself up two or three times , 
falls asleep, sitting. From room left a head peeps out, 
the body follows, and Marta, the second wife, appears,) 

Marta (speaking back). Yes, she's up. (The four 
other wives come to the door. They huddle in a group 
and make whispered comments upon Emla with much 
tittering) . No wonder her father had hard work to get 
rid of her. They say he offered her to every patriarch 
in the world. 

The Wives (variously). How disgracefully small 
her hands are. Her feet are useless. She has the bosom 
of a priest. Her ankles are slimmer than an antelope's. 

Marta. Her father had to throw in fifty oxen, one 
hundred sheep and eighty goats. (The women all tit- 
ter more loudly.) Hush! You will wake her and then 
we shall be beaten. Come, we may as well begin. 

(The women all turn their backs and draw their cur- 
tain open with a swish. Emla opens her eyes with a 
start and then sits bolt upright and rigid. Still with 
their backs turned, the women fall into line across their 
doorway.) 

The Wives (loudly and in unison). The other wives 
sleep while the head-wife watches. (They turn and in 
single file headed by Marta approach the center door- 
way and stand.) 

Marta. All night have the faithful eyes of the head- 
wife remained unclosed. 

Emla (intoning antiphonally) . But the eyes of the 
heedless others were heavy with selfish slumber. (She 
rises briskly and takes the bunch of keys that hangs 
from her girdle. From the other end of the file, one by 



42 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

one each woman goes to her and receives a hey, hangs 
it upon her girdle, and returns to her place. ^ The store- 
house of grain and fodder. The storehouse of meats. 
The slave's food. The slaves may no longer eat of the 
breast of the fowl. Yesterday the priests declared it 
unseemly. Only the drumsticks^ the wings, and the 
necks. See you remember. The table of the household. 
The women may no longer eat bread parched on both 
sides. Yesterday the priests declared it unseemly. See 
you remember. (To Marta.) The storeroom of liquor. 
Yesterday I found less than I expected. Can it be pos- 
sible that any of our slaves has broken the sacred tabu? 
Impiously partaken of the patriarch's private store? 

Marta {genuinely shocked). Impossible! 

Emla. Could any of the maid servants 

Marta (breaking in amazed). The maid servants? 
A woman take a drink! 

Emla (severely). Certainly not! I was about to 
say, could they have smuggled out any to their young 
men? 

Marta (rvith acid dignity). Not while I am trusted 
with the key. I was brought up in a proper household. 

Emla (speculating). I don't think Garthus drank 
more than usual last night. 

Marta (crisply). Any other commands? 

Emla. No. 

Marta (to the rvives). It is late. Summon your 
maid-servants and give them your orders for the day 
the moment you are at liberty. (To Emla.) If he did 
drink more than usual, he may not appear till noon. 
(With the air of one who could manage better) Some- 
thing should be done about the entire household waiting 
until noon to begin. 

Emla. Yes. I will ask the priests. 

(The priests at this moment draw back their curtain 
and appear. They come out in single file and with ex- 
cessive ceremony. Their stiffness greatly contrasts with 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 43 

their earlier naturalness. The women all bow their 
heads upon the ground and rise at once.) 

The Priests. All night have the sleepless priests 
watched over this helpless household. 

The Wives (intoning antiphonally) . While the 
worthless wives of the master lay stupid as logs in 
slumber. 

Emla (turning briskly to Odena). It is inconvenient 
to begin the day so late. Can you not make some cere- 
mony to be used in time of great drunkenness? That 
we may begin before he arises? 

Odena. The more drunkenness the more honor. 
When only the master may be drunk, the drunker he is 
the better. 

Emla. I would not decrease by a moment the hours 
of his manly drunkenness. I am told he has been drunk- 
er since I came than ever before. (All the other wives 
bridle with indignation.) But it is inconvenient not to 
be able to wind up the day till he appears. I am sure 
Odena is clever enough to allow the day to begin and the 
master still to be drunk at one and the same time. By 
another of his beautiful ceremonies. 

Odena (not unpleased witth the idea of trying his 
skill). There are many prerogatives to think out at 
once, lest some unseemly innovation 

Emla (interrupting). The more difficulties, the more 
honor to clever Odena. 

Odena. It might be done. But the God of Early 
Rising must not be pleased at the expense of the God 
of the Master's Drunkenness. 

Emla (boldly). Since it is seemly that drunkenness 
be only for the master, why should not early rising be 
only for women and slaves? 

Odena (concealing his approval of this reasoning). 
The matter is not so simple as a woman without brains 
might imagine. Still, I will think of it. 

Emla (seeing the certain flutter). He is getting up. 



44 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

{The priests fall in line hach of the altar. The 
lesser wives line up to face the doorway. Emla stands 
alone on the left. Garthus pushes hack the curtain and 
appears J yawning. He is attired in a much tousled tu- 
nic. The women all prostrate themselves and remain 
prostrated during the ceremony.^ 

Emla {intoning). The master arises before the sun. 

The Wives. He rises and bids the sun hasten. 

The Priests He rises and the sun prepares to 
follow. 

All Together. The master rises and the day 
begins. 

{Emla goes to him and begins to unbutton his tunic. 
The other women draw back the curtain, go in, and bring 
out a fresh tunic. They hand it to Emla, who puts it 
upon him. Then they unfold his mantle of red cloth, 
and all them holding it together, she affixes it to his shoul- 
ders by two large brooches, each of a single stone. All 
this has been done in silence, while he submits, yawning 
and bored. Marta takes up the discarded tunic and 
stands waiting.) 

Marta {intoning), \\Tiat, O head-wife, shall be 
done with the husks of yesterday? 

Emla {intoning). What, O head-priest, shall be 
done with the husks of yesterday? 

Odena. The husks of yesterday shall be cast into 
the oven. That they may make the bread of today. 

{Marta crosses down from the left, where she is, and 
goes out Left front). 

Garthus {intoning in a bored voice to the lesser wives 
who again have lined up). The day has begun. {The 
lesser wives at once go about their several duties, some 
going Left front, some Right front, some into room left. 
The curtains of the three rooms are now standing en- 
tirely drawn back. Only the middle room, however, is 
entirely disclosed on account of the size and location of 
the opening. This room contains but a bed and the 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 45 

chest af drawers out of which the wives have brought 
the clothes.) This clothes ceremony is very stupid. It 
bores me. (To Odena.) And why should they be burnt 
up every day.^ 

Odena (indulgently). Garthus does not perceive the 
inner meanings of things. 

Garthus. But it uses up a lot of perfectly good 
clothes. Yesterday's husk cost me one woman slave 
and a half and I had to pay the half in goats at 
that. 

Odena. I thought you were glad to have your wealth 
so demonstrated. What is the use of wealth if you do 
not use it.'' It took me sleepless nights to invent so ex- 
cellently wasteful a method. 

Emla. And how well he explained it. The more 
waste^ the more honor. 

Garthus. Well, yes, I suppose so. But it's such a 
bore to be changing your clothes every day. (Emla 
is seen trying to seize an idea which suddenly hits her. 
She stands with wide eyes abstracted.) It's a good 
method. But don't go thinking it can't be improved 
upon. 

Odena {indignantly). It's easier to get a new idea 
than improve upon an old one. 

Garthus. And that other method of yours. Mak- 
ing visits to all the patriarchs of the neighborhood. — To 
show off my household and bestow presents. That bores 
me too. There's no use in visiting unless to get a new 
wife. 

Odena {indulgently) . Garthus does not perceive the 
inner meanings of things. The more visits and pres- 
ents, the more you impress other people with your lei- 
sure and wealth. What is the use of leisure unless you 
do it before people ? You might as well be asleep. And 
what, I say again, is the use of more wealth than you 
can use unless a clever priest spends sleepless nights 
inventing new methods to use it? Emla, the head- wife. 



46 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

will bear me out. I say Emla^ the head-wife, will bear 
me out. 

Emla (having now definitely formulated her thought 
and speaking boldly — as becomes a person who origi- 
nates a startling innovation). You say it bores you to 
change your clothes and make visits.'' 

Garthus. Damnably. What are you driving at 
now.f* 

Emla. If my noble master's mind is above such tri- 
fles, then why should not I, the head-wife, perform for 
you all the clothes changing and the visiting? 

Garthus (in amazement). It was never done before. 

Odena (imperiously). I could not give my sanc- 
tion 

Emla (in pretended surprise). Why, it was your 
idea. You said so yourself. 

Odena. I } When } 

Emla. Just now, when you asked me to bear you 
out. I thought it was the cleverest idea you ever got. 

Garthus (delighted). Just when there seemed no 
escape from this endless business of using my wealth ! 
Cleverest idea you ever got. 

Odena (having now readjusted himself to the notion) » 
I do not say that there are not difficulties. Conflicting 
prerogatives and 

Emla. But you will surmount them. By another 
of your beautiful ceremonies. 

Garthus. Well, I'm glad that's settled. Mind, I 
don't change my clothes for at least a month. Unless I 
get very drunk. Now summon the head-slave of the 
hunt. I'll have a bite to eat and start out. 

Emla (aside to Odena). Are their beards all de- 
cently trimmed? (He nods — she goes on in her cere- 
monial voice.) The master wishes to hunt. 

Odena (to Ahra). The master wishes to hunt. 

Akra (calling at Left front). The master wishes to 
hunt. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 47 

{He tahes his place with the priests again. The head- 
slave enters Left. His beard and hair are trimmed, 
shorter than thase of Garthus which are grown to their 
full length. He carries a spear.) 

The Head-Slave of the Hunt (prostrating him- 
self and rising). O Long Beard^ the short-beard slaves 
of the hunt are in readiness. They wait for their break- 
fast. As our beards are shorter than thine^ shorter also 
our breath, our strength, our endurance. 

Garthus (bored). Head-slave of the Hunt, they 
have my permission. For the short beard signifieth less 
strength than the long. (The head-slave presents his 
spear to Garthus, goes out Left front.) Couldn't you let 
her do all this too.^ 

Odena. Garthus has no perception of the inner 
meanings of things. 

Garthus. Well, come along. I'm hungry. 

Odena. You were to give orders that they break 
ground for the temple. 

Garthus (crossly). Well, summon them. 

Emla (aside to Odena). You are sure they have all 
shaved today .f* Last time some of their beards showed 
most indecently. (Odena nods — in her ceremonial 
voice). The master would speak to the head-slaves of 
the workers. 

Odena (ta Ahra). The master would speak to the 
head-slaves of the workers. 

Akra (going to Left and calling). The master would 
speak to the head-slaves of the workers. 

(Four men enter and prostrate themselves and remain 
prostrate. Their faces are shaved and their hair is 
cropped.) 

The Head-slave. O Bearded One, the workers wait 
thy voice. They are too weak to grow any hair at all 
upon their faces and very little upon their heads. O 
Bearded One, we can only fetch water. 



48 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

Second Head-slave. O Bearded One^ we can only 

dig earth. 

Third Head-slave. O Bearded One, we can onlj» 
cut wood. 

Fourth Head-slave. O Bearded One, we can only 
hew stone. 

All the Head-slaves. We are not strong enough to 
hunt. 

Garthus. Head-slaves of the workers, the Bearded 
One knoweth that vou have only strength to work. 
For the smooth face is the face of the stripling 
and the woman. It siguifieth there is no strength what- 
ever. Hear now the voice of the Bearded One. {To 
Odena listlessly.') A^Tiat do I say? 

Odena. Report to me after my breakfast. 

Garthus. Head-slaves of the workers, report to the 
head priest, after his breakfast. {The slaves rise and 
go out Left.) Come along now. I'm hungry, I tell you. 
{He starts.) 

Odena {stopping him with his voice). Garthus has 
no perception of the inner meanings of things. 

Garthus {halting). Oh, very well, you can have the 
procession but cut the ceremony. 

Odena {remonstrating). Garthus has 

Garthus. I tell you I won't have the ceremony. If 
you don't want the procession, so much the better. 

{They march around the altar as Emla prostrates her- 
self near Right front. As they pass out, Garthus 
ceremonially touches her head with his spear, the priests 
wave aside their garments, and Ahra with great unction 
places his foot upon her bach. When they have gone 
by Right front, Emla runs to the chest of draw- 
ers and furtively takes out a huge brooch of a single 
stone, lilxe those with which she had clasped on his man- 
tle but bigger. She comes out to make sure she is alone 
and tries it on, fondly and covetously. She comes out 
into the courtyard to get a better light on it. Maga 
enters Right front.) 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 49 

Emla (starting). I was cleaning it. 

Maca {with kindly quiBsicality). And so you clasped 
it upon you? The new wife takes liberties. With the 
sacred tabu of the head of the household. 

Emla {coaxingly). Are you not well? That you have 
eaten so quickly? 

Maga. I have finished. 

Emla. If Gar thus has finished, I will go get my 
breakfast. 

Maga. No, he is eating. I stole away. To finish 
some work. 

Emla. Work? A priest work? 

Maga (smiling). All work is not unworthy. A priest 
may work for the service of the p^ds. This is a head- 
dress for Odena. 

Emla. A head-dress! What is that? 

Maga. To go on the head. When he makes the 
sacrifice. 

Emla. Oh, let me see it! 

Maga (anxious to shorn it). You must not tell ? (She 
shakes her head vehemently. He makes sure the coast 
is clear.) I will show you. 

Emla (as he goes into room right). I'll put this 
back. 

Maga (re-entering). Here. (He carries a head- 
dress made like a mitre, out of the sides sprout truo 
large curling horns. He has a child's pride in his 
work.) 

Emla (running down from returning the brooch to 
the drawer). Oh! (She is in ecstasy of admiration.) 

Maga. Another horn fits on the top. 

Emla. Oh, I should love to see it on ! 

Maga (as delighted as she is). See! (He puts it 
on. The horns curl in about his neck, so that he must 
thrust his jaw upwards.) 

Emla (delighted). It must be very heavy and un- 
comfortable ! 



50 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

Maga. You will have to hold your neck so. The 
more discomfort the more honor. 

Emla. It is beautiful, beautiful. 

Maga. I wish I could see it. 

Emla (^coaxingly hut a little aghast at her own dar- 
ing^. Put it on me and you can see it. 

Maga. On you ! 

Emla. Then you can see how beautiful it is. What 
it must be to have such brains and such hands ! 

Maga {tempted). No one will see. You must not 
tell. 

Emla (breathless and sobered). No. (He puts it 
on her.) 

Maga {standing off and concerned only with the ef- 
fect). What a splendid curl! Just as I saw it all in 
my mind. I have been picking out the goats for 
weeks. 

Emla. Oh, if I could only see myself! 

Maga {suddenly realizing the enormity of the impro- 
priety, and snatching it off) . Just like a woman ! I 
don't know why you ever did such a thing. If you 
ever tell, Odena will punish you severely. {He goes 
toward room right but pauses to examine the head- 
dress. ) 

Emla {banding her hands upon her head and strain- 
ing her jaw upwards). How beautiful! And so uncom- 
fortable ! 

Maga {hastily, to Odena who enters right front). I 
was just fixing in the third horn. 

Emla. When I saw him and asked what it was. 

Odena {observing it critically). The horns should 
curl up more. 

Maga {indignantly). Blame the goats not me. 

Odena. Nevertheless I fear it will not be uncom- 
fortable enough. Can't you make something to have the 
jaw go so? {He strains his head as far bach and up 
as possible.) 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 51 

Maga. Then it would fall oiF. But nothing ever 
suits you. 

Odena (conciliatingly) . Well^ the next will be more 
uncomfortable. 

Maga (grumbling). Think it up yourself then. (He 
goes into room right.) 

Emla. What are you going to call it? 

(Akra appears Right front. He conceals something 
hastily in the folds of his robe on seeing Emla. Odena 
goes quickly to him.) 

Odena (in a low voice). Did you get it? (Akra 
exposes secretly a cup, which Odena looks into). It is 
not much. 

Akra. All he left. 

Odena. Put it in my bottle. Don't let her see you. 
(He turns up again. Akra cannot go into the room as 
Emla is just in front of it.) 

Emla. Are you going to call it just a head-dress? 

Odena (in surprise). Everybody could spell that at 
once. 

Akra (glibly). Everything relating to priests must 
be spelt in the most uncomfortable manner possible. 

Odena. Yes. I thought up your name last night. 
You are a Neophyte. (Akra with one hand fumbles 
for his tablet and is in danger of exposing his cup. 
Odena goes on hastily.) You can write it down later. 
The "Neo" is unfortunately quite simple. But you 
proceed beautifully from the expected to the unexpect- 
ed. The "Phyte" is a triumph of unexpectedness. You 
would natural expect f-i-g-h-t. It is p-h-y-t-e. The 
"t" is the only letter you expect. 

Marta (entering hastily from Left front entrance, 
about to cross to Right front, her manner indicating sup- 
pressed excitement). I thought you were at breakfast. 
He has gone to the hunt. (Emla, noticing her manner, 
goes down to meet her. Akra slips into the room, lifting 
up the cup as he does so and sniffing at its contents. 



52 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

Odena sees him doing it and talcing him hy the ear, 
seizes the cup and marches him into the room.) He is 
hunting on the mountains between your father's land 
and ours. 

Emla {curious as to her manner hut superior). Well? 

Marta. He hunted there yesterday. A slave lives 
there with his daughter. They belong to your father. 

Emla. My father owns many slaves and their daugh- 
ters. 

Marta. She met Garthus there yesterday. One of 
our slaves of the Hunt told one of the maid-servants 
who told me. I feared Garthus might go to see her 
again today. So I sent some of our slaves to capture 
her. It is disgraceful. Has he not wives enough whom 
he is neglecting. f* One might expect an occasional maid 
servant of our own but a slave ! And beyond his own 
household ! 

Emla. Garthus has taken up with a common slave? 

Marta. Yes. When he had just married you. 

Emla {not noticing her gibe). And I thought he had 
never been more contented and drunk in his life. 

Marta. Some lick-spittle maid-servant must have 
told you that. We could have told you different. 

Emla. A common slave! In the forest? 

Marta. What right has a slave to live with her fa- 
ther in the forest? No patriarch who can manage his 
household would allow it. 

Emla {haughtily). You are speaking of my father! 

Marta. Slaves are not good enough for the creature. 
What is to be done? 

Emla. I will ask the priests. {Calling.) Odena ! 

Maga {appearing at door). Odena is busy. What is 
it? 

Emla. Garthus. A woman slave yesterday while 
hunting. 

Marta. It is disgraceful. 

Emla. Has he not wives enough of his own? 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 53 

Marta. Or maid-servants? 

Maga. He is a patriarch. A man may do as he 
pleases in his own household. 

Emla and Marta. But he went beyond it ! 

Maga (^shocked), A slave of another patriarch's? 

Marta. Her father*s. 

Maga {scratching his head). That is another mat- 
ter. I will get Odena. {Goes into room.) 

Marta {calling after). When he had just married 
her. 

Emla {angrily). Why do you keep on saying when 
he had just married me? It's your affair, too. 

Marta. No such thing happened when / was head- 
wife. If there were slaves at all, they were ours. 

Emla {with increasing heat). He has insulted your 
father as well as mine. 

Marta. Insulted your father? If he has, it would 
serve him right. Letting a woman slave live with her 
father! {They run to Odena, who enters.) Garthus 
has 

Emla {peremptorily). The head-wife complains to 
priests ! Garthus has taken up with a slave. 

Marta. It is disgraceful. 

Emla. He has insulted our fathers. 

Odena {with authority). A patriarch has preroga- 
tives. He may do as he pleases in his own household. 

Emla. But he went beyond it. 

Odena {scandalised). Another patriarch's? 

Marta. A slave of her father's. 

Emla {angrily). What does it, matter whose father 
it is ! He has insulted six fathers. 

Marta. He has insulted mine most. Your father's 
slave is not my father's slave. And I was head-wife 
before you came. 

Emla. And another before you came. You were 
all head-wives once. I tell you he has insulted all our 
fathers alike. 



54 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

Odena (with authority). Peace! There are many 
questions involved. (Thinking his way out.) One — he 
has insulted the fathers of all of you. 

Emla (triumphantly). I told you so. 

Marta (relying on her intuition). But she is your 
father's slave. 

Odena. Peace! Two — the fact that she is your fa- 
ther's slave is a fact of wide implication, 

Marta (triumphantly). I told you so. 

Emla. Ridiculous. 

Odena. Peace! Three — the insult to your father 
(Marta) is less than the insult to your father (Emla.) 
For it is your father's slave. 

Marta (crestfallen to Emla triumphant). But your 
father has no business to let a woman-slave live with 
her father. (To Odena.) Four? 

Odena. Things come in threes. I have finished. 

Marta and Emla. Well^ what's to be done about it.^* 

Odena. If it were your own slave, you could pun- 
ish her. As it is not, nothing. 

Emla (blankly). Something should be done when 
these things happen with slaves. When you can beat 
them, at least you show some trifling respect to decency. 

Odena. But she is not your slave. 

Emla. She was once. At least, when I was in my 
father's household, I could have got one of his wives to 
beat her. 

Odena. But you have left his household. What 
would become of a man's personal rights if the women 
of different households could get together? 

Emla (baffled). Wives have no way to organize any- 
thing. It looks as if men had arranged it on purpose. 

Odena. One cannot expect a woman to perceive the 
hidden meanings of things. 

Emla. Then if we can't punish her, why not him? 

Odena (astounded). Punish a man? And a pa- 
triarch ? 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 55 

Emla. When he takes up with another patriarch's 
slave_, I should think you could see that it interferes 
with another man's personal rights. 

Odena. Why, what has he done after all? 

Emla. He has mixed up the whole order of things. 
If there's a child;, whose slave will it be? 

Marta. Oh ! We can give three goats apiece to the 
God of Child-birth that there be no child. 

Emla {struck with the idea). That will make eigh- 
teen. He'll do anything we want for eighteen. 

Odena (taking advantage of the opportunity). You 
may give him sixty, it would make no difference. There 
is no God of Child-birth. 

Marta and Emla (astounded). What! 

Odena. I discovered it yesterday. And I had no 
sooner discovered that there was none than I discovered 
there was no good in one anyhow. The God of Child- 
birth was only a primitive survival. 

Marta and Emla (aghast and indignant). Are wo- 
men to have no god at all? 

Odena. That's just it. One — by primitive man 
woman was not considered a human being. Two — she 
was another kind of being. Three — therefore he gave 
her a god of her own. Do you not see that if you con- 
tinue this God of Child-birth, you are continuing a prim- 
itive idea that would otherwise have perished long since? 
If woman has a god of her own, you make her essen- 
tially another being from man. 

Emla (at once entertaining the idea). Of course, 
they are made out of the same material. 

Odena (cautiously). Except that men have brains 
and souls. At least, they should have the same gods. 

Marta (regretfully). But it was nice to have a god 
of your own. 

Odena. Oh, a man's god will look out for you just 
as well. 

Emla. I can tell you one thing right now. You 



56 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

can't expect women to go on believing in your gods 
unless you have a woman-god among them. 

Marta {decidedly). Let's ask Gar\hus not to give 
up the God of Child-birth. 

Odena. Not that it matters to me. But you can't 
expect me to punish slaves for you if you object to 
everything I want. 

Marta and Emla {eagerly). Can you punish her.'* 

Odena {in a tone of concession). There are many 
prerogatives involved. {To Marta.) Is that a maid- 
servant yonder.'' {Marta goes to entrance Left to see.) 
Send her away. One cannot discuss important matters 
with such a brainless creature interfering. 

Marta {returning). There is no one there. 

Emla. Go get your breakfast. 

Marta. Before you.^ 

Emla. I don't wish any. {Marta hesitates.) Go! 
{Marta goes Right front.) 

Odena {after satisfying himself that she has gone). 
It is gratifying to talk to one woman who is not alto- 
gether a fool. Garthus has but one wife who is not 
altogether a fool. He will not of himself care two 
sticks whether there is a God of Child-birth or not^ but 
if this brainless creature should get at him.'' 

Emla. She has no influence with him whatever. 

Odena. But will it not be better to anticipate her? 
Then he will shut her up at once. 

Emla. And in return you will punish this slave? 

Odena. I will devise some way. 

Emla. I will speak to Garthus. {After a moment, 
shrewdly.) Why are you so anxious to abolish the God 
of Child-birth? 

Odena. To abolish the false distinctions between 
men and women. 

Emla. So that the true ones will be more important? 

Odena {a little nonplussed, resorting to flattery). 
You are one woman in a thousand. I may tell you that 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 57 

there is another reason. This God of Child-birth not 
only perpetuates a false distinction but is one god the 
more when there should be fewer. 

Emla {amazed). Fewer? 

Odena. You saw yourself how the God of the Mas- 
ter's Drunkenness stood in the way of the God of Early 
Rising. Too many gods interfere and we cannot get on. 

Emla. On to what? 

Odena. If there were fewer, you could please them 
more. As it is, what pleases one annoys another. Fi- 
nally, if there is only one god, you can do what you 
want with him. Because you can cater to him exclu- 
sively. 

Emla. One god? Are there others who are primi- 
tive survivals? 

Odena. Clever priests will doubtless find them so 
in time. In oneness there is all the power there is. We 
must simplify therefore. That is the only way to 
get on. 

Emla. But what do you wish to get on to? 

Odena {evasively^. To get on to? Why everything 
that is to come. 

Emla {'practically^. I wish to get on to putting this 
slave to death. 

Odena {amazed^. To beat her, to cut off her ears, 
or anything that won't keep her from working. But to 
put her to death! Such a thing has not been done. 

Emla. I don't know why things are. But I know 
that women-slaves are not like maid-servants and that 
maid-servants are not like wives. It is marriage 
that makes the difference. Marriage is not much, for 
after all Garthus may take up with anybody he pleases. 
But at least wives are not maid-servants and they can 
order people about. Therefore the way for wives to get 
on is to pretend that marriage means more than it does. 
That's why I want this slave put to death. It is not 
much, for it will not hinder Garthus. But at least it 



58 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

will discourage slaves. Later^ we will try to discourage 
maid-servants. Then, we will try to discourage him. 

Odena (with decision). Why should she not be sac- 
rificed at the altar. 

Emla (with a scream of delight). Will she do as 
well as a goat.^ 

Odena. With the proper ceremony, better. 

Emla. That will be sure to discourage others. Es- 
pecially if you drain her blood slowly like a goat's. 

Odena. But will Garthus object.^ 

Emla. She is not his slave but my father's. And 
my father will not know about it until it is over. 

Odena. And if he should object, Garthus can go to 
war with him! 

Emla. What is war.^ 

Odena. Men fighting each other, as they fight with 
beasts. 

Emla. Men killing each other? (Vehemently.) No, 
I should not like it at all. There are not enough men 
to go round as it is. Garthus has six wives and they 
must share him with maid-servants and slaves. 

Odena. But war is only a little diiferent from 
hunting. Even patriarchs are sometimes killed in hunt- 
ing. Besides, Garthus is beginning to grow tired of it. 
He was hunting when he came across this slave and had 
time not been heavy on his hands, he would not have 
taken up with her. 

Emla. That may be all well enough. But I will 
not hear of this war. 

Odena. And hunting is no longer honorable for a 
patriarch. In spite of all we can do, the slaves will 
hunt secretly. Garthus is becoming disgusted with it. 

Emla. No war, I tell you ! If you suggest war to 
Garthus, I'll suggest something that you won't want 
at all. 

Odena (annoyed out of his caution). What can a 
brainless woman suggest. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 59 

Emla {indignantly). Didn't I get him to start the 
temple against your will? Oh, that is what I can doi 
I will say it is not seemly that anybody build the temple 
but priests ! You must do all the digging and stone- 
hewing and building yourselves. 

Odena {dumbfounded). But — we serve the gods! 

Emla. That would be serving the gods. And many 
of them are only survivals anyway. 

Odena. The gods do no work. It is not meet that 
their servants should work. If they work, it will be- 
little the gods. 

Emla. But Maga works. He makes things. {Odena 
is startled.) A head-dress for you. 

Odena {with relief). Oh that! But that is not 
menial. 

Emla. What is menial? 

Odena. It is anything that is productive. 

Emla. Your temple would not produce anything, 
either. 

Odena {ignoring this). Besides, no one else could 
make the head-dress. If they could, it would be menial 
too. Whatever anyone else can make is dishonorable 
for a priest to make. It is our function to illustrate 
the leisure of the gods. Priests serve the gods by 
doing nothing — except praising them and telling their 
exploits. We must have some place to praise them in. 
The more work it costs other people, the more honor 
for the gods. 

Emla {with disconcerting suddenness). You have no 
beards. Why should you not work the same as slaves? 

Odena {staggered). You have no beards either. 

Emla. But they do not come. You have to shave 
every day. That shows you should work. 

Odena {in confusion, throwing caution to> the winds). 
That is to illustrate our weakness. We are consorts to 
the gods. 

Emla. But I am a consort. I work. {Discovering 



60 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

a great point.) We wives are all of us belittling him to 
work. 

Odena. You are altogether brainless. What would 
become of his household? 

Emla. Then let the other wives work. The head- 
wife should only praise him and tell his exploits. I 
don't know why things are. But I know that maid- 
servants can order women-slaves and wives can order 
maid-servants, and the head-wife can order the other 
wives — while she lasts. {Suddenly she grasps the idea 
toward which she has been groping.) The way for 
wives to get on is to simplify. There should be only 
one wife. 

Odena. One? Garthus could never get along with 
one wife. 

Emla. What difference does it make to him whether 
they are wives or not? 

Odena. You know nothing whatever. A patriarch 
only marries to see who the next patriarch will be. 

Emla. Is that what it is for? 

Odena. How could they choose out of so many 
children? They choose only from the children of the 
wives. 

Emla (triumphantly). Then they should choose only 
from the children of the head-wife. It would be easier. 

Odena. And none of them might be worth chooA ing. 
It would be dangerous. And since more than one wife, 
the more wives the more honor. 

Emla. If it is only for honor that a man has many 
wives, then the honor can be secured in some other way. 

Odena. How unsafe it is to argue without a knowl- 
edge of history! That is why wives were invented — 
to bring honor. The father is honored because he sells 
his daughter instead of giving her away. The husband 
is honored because he has somebody to attend to his 
slaves instead of attending to them himself. It was a 
clever priest who discovered that. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 61 

Emla. Then will it not be a cleverer priest who 
discovers how one wife may bring more honor than 
many? 

Odena {grudgingly, his imagination stirred}. Yes. 

Emla. I will tell you. She will do nothing but il- 
lustrate his leisure. Do nothing but tell his exploits and 
spend his wealth. Especially by changing clothes. 

Odena {really much impressed but concealing it as 
rvell as he can). Who ever thought of such a thing! 

Emla. If a clever priest does not think of it right 
away, some cleverer priest will get ahead of him. 

Odena {alarmed at possible competition}. No pa- 
triarch has a cleverer — 

Emla. So Garthus will think when you tell him you 
thought of it. 

Odena {adjusting himself rapidly to the idea). But 
his other wives .^ 

Emla. You are clever enough to think up something 
for them to be. 

Odena. Yes, yes ! But what ? 

Emla, Some middle thing of course. WTiich is and 
which isn't. You could make them it with a beautiful 
ceremony. 

Odena {dazzled}. And they would really not be 
much different from what they are already. 

Emla. And if they were, what would it matter ? The 
ceremony will make the poor creatures feel important 
again. And if as time goes on they find that being it 
is not what they thought, neither they nor their fathers 
can do anything about it. 

Odena {delighted as the idea unfolds). If they ob- 
ject, Garthus can go to war with them! 

Emla. No war, I tell you! 

Odena {emphatically). He must go to war. Other- 
wise I shall not make you the only wife and the others 
— the others its. 

Emla, Oh yes you will. You are not going to throw 



62 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

away the cleverest idea you ever had^ in all your clever 
life. What will you call what you are going to make 
them? 

Odena (protesting). That will need many sleepless 
nights. There is much hidden meaning to signify. 

Emla. But when I am the only wife, I must do 
something, I should be more bored than Garthus, in 
spite of changing clothes and making visits. A woman 
must work at something. 

Odena {sharply). Then you will spoil my whole 
idea. You cannot illustrate leisure and do anything else. 

Emla. Yes, you can. If you do something which is 
work and which isn't. 

Marta (entering Left front). I've got the creature! 

Emla (with fierce eagerness). Wliat does she look 
like? 

Marta. No figure whatever. I can't imagine what 
he ever saw in such a runt. Why, his sixth wife has 
larger feet. 

Emla. Odena is going to put her to death. 

Marta. Has Garthus consented? 

Emla. No^ but he will. Oh, he is back from hunting 
already. 

Garthus (To Emla and Marta who run to him as he 
enters Right front, in a rage). Don't speak to me. 
Your father is no patriarch. 

Emla. What's the matter? 

Garthus. Don't speak to me. You dishonor me by 
speaking to me. 

Marta (delighted). We could have told you so when 
you bought her. 

Odena. What has happened? 

Garthus. I shall never hunt again. That what's 
happened. 

Odena (eagerly). But her father? 

Garthus. He is no patriarch. He has acted like a 
common slave. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 63 

Marta. We could have — 

Garthus. You would never believe it. No self-re- 
specting patriarch can ever hunt again. 

Odena. What has he done? 

Garthus. Her father is actually — eating the game 
he kills. Eating it! To save his own cattle. Just now 
I met his hunters carrying it home. To feed Ms own 
household with! 

Odena. Impossible. 

Garthus. I saw it, I tell you. He'll be selling it 
next. The miserable renegade has made hunting a 
business. He is no longer fit for a patriarch. 

Odena {very gravely). Undermine his own social 
institutions.'^ He should be punished. 

Garthus. Punish a patriarch ! 

Odena. Certainly. Why not? Society must protect 
its institutions. 

Garthus (bitterly to Emla). I might have known 
your father had a yellow streak. He drove too sharp a 
bargain wl-en he sold you. But you expect fathers to 
flim-flam husbands. I never dreamed he would debase 
the entire patriarchal order. 

Marta. We could have — 

Garthus. No self-respecting patriarch can ever 
hunt again. What on earth shall I do with myself all 
day ! I can't drink all the time. Your father should be 
• — unpatriarched. I suppose yom will be doing some- 
thing undignified next and bringing disgrace upon my 
household. Like father, like child. 

Marta. If I were head-wife again — 

Garthus. I can't hunt. Visiting bores me. I will 
not change any more clothes. {To Odena.) You will 
have to think up something respectable for me to do. 

Emla {quickly, as Odena is about to seize the oppor- 
tunity). I will tell you what to do. That is supremely 
respectable. Go to war with my father. 

Garthus* War ! 



64 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

Emla. Show him how to treat patriarchs who debase 
their order. He is unworthy of being the father of 
your head-wife. You owe it to me to punish him_, to 
yourself^ to society. 

Garth Tjs. I never heard of such a thing. No pa- 
triarch ever went to war. 

Emla. No patriarch ever disgraced the noble pas- 
time of hunting. 

Garthus {helplessly to Odena). What do you think 
of it? 

Odena. You must protect the patriarchal honor. 
Emla is a fit head-wife for a patriarch. She proves she 
is no child of her father's. 

Marta {bewildered and chagrined^. Her father 
can't even manage his own slaves. 

Emla {threateningly^ . Do you want Garthus to put 
that slave to death? 

Marta {hrorv-heaten) . Yes. 

Emla. Then you'd better let me attend to it. 

Garthus. What slave? 

Emj-a {imperiously to Marta). Go get Garthus some- 
thing to drink. 

Garthus. What slave? 

Emla {reluctant to open the subject at so unfortu- 
nate a moment). The slave you met on the mountain 
yesterday. 

Garthus {indifferently). Oh, that one? Why should 
I put her to death? 

Emla. Because you have taken up with her. 

Garthus. Well, I like that! 

Emla. Because — because — {she turns to Odena to 
help her out). 

Odena. Because she is her father's slave of course. 
Are you not going to war with him? 

Garthus. That is all well enough. But she said it 
was because I took up with her. And what she says all 
my household will be saying. I shall do no such thing. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise Q5 

It will reflect on me. Put a slave to death because I 
took up with her ! 

Odena. But you went beyond your household. It 
is unpatriarchal. 

Garthus. I don't care what it is. 

Odena (changing his tactics). It won't cost you 
anything. She is not your slave. 

Garthus. What do I care.^ What is one slave more 
or less in the world .f* But I will not put her to death 
because I took up with her. It will reflect on me. 

Odena and Emla and Marta. But 

Garthus (in desperation). Be quiet all of you! 
First, a patriarch dishonoring himself like a slave eating 
his own game. And now, a slave put to death because 
a patriarch has honored her. The world is going mad ! 
I am going to get drunk! It is the only honorable 
thing left me. (He stalks into his bedroom and savage- 
ly dt'ams the curtain.) 

Marta (helplessly). What shall we do.^* 

Emla. So you thought you could manage! Go get 
him his drink at once. (Marta goes out meeldy Right 
front, holding up her hey.) You said you would devise 
some way, otherwise, I wouldn't have let him go to war. 

Odena. Some way will come. But only after a 
sleepless night. 

Emla (energetically) . I am going to get on to kill- 
ing that slave at once. Sacrifice her now and think up 
a reason afterwards. 

Odena. But what reason? 

Emla. He said to kill her would discredit him. 
Then to let her live must discredit him still more. Thai 
must be the reason. But the thing is to kill her now 
while he is getting drunk. (Delighted.) Oh, and you 
can wear your new head-dress. (Marta comes in rvith a 
jug of wine and goes into the hack room.) And at the 
same time you must announce what she and the other 
wives are to be. Wliat are they to be? 



66 The Craft of ,the Tortoise Act II 

Odena (protesting). These are matters of weighty 
importance. Such things cannot be done without sleep- 
lessness. 

Emla {to Marta as she re-enters and goes Right 
front). Did he drink it right down? 

Marta. Yes. Another at once. 

Emla (to Odena delightedly). He will be very 
drunk. You will have till tomorrow to think up the 
reason. (To Marta.) The other wives will be in at 
breakfast. Give them the slave and we will get on at 
once. (Marta goes Right front.) But you can't have 
until tomorrow to think up a name for the other wives. 
For you must sacrifice this slave right away. 

Odena (dismayed). Without a new ceremony? 

Emla (firmly). You must sacrifice her at once with- 
out ceremony^ and you must wear your new head-dress. 
That and the sacrifice of a slave will give all the more 
distinction to what the other wives will be when you 
have named them. (Odena expostulates.) No. You 
go right ahead and when the times comes the name will 
come too. (Marta enters with another jug of wine.) 
The slave? 

Marta (grimly). They have her. (She hurries into 
room.) 

Emla (as a noise of women's voices is heard). 
They're coming. (The wives enter Right front, pulling 
and jeering at a woman homnd in their midst.) Hush, 
he may interfere. He's not too drunk yet. (The wo- 
men throw the slave in front of the altar. Marta re- 
turns hastily). More? 

Marta. Yes. (She runs out Right front.) 

Emla (going to the slave and sur-veying her frOTn all 
points). What could he see in her? How disgracefully 
small her hands are. Her body is like an ant's. 

The Wives (variously). Her feet are useless. Her 
ankle bones are slimmer than an antelope's. She has 
wrists like a gazelle. She has the bosom of a priest. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 67 

Emla. Odena is going to put her to death. {The 
slave with a moan sinks to her knees, as Marta returns 
hastily with another jug.) He will sacrifice her and 
drain her blood slowly like a goat's. 

Marta {pausing contemptuously to survey her). The 
creature looks to have less blood than a goat. 

Odena {thoughtfully measuring the slave and the 
altar with his eyes). If we sacrifice her on the altar, 
we must double her up. 

Emla. Quickly! You must get your head-dress. 
{To Marta.) Quickly! He must be very drunk or he 
will interfere. {Marta starts to go.) Stop ! {She runs 
and seizes the jug — to Odena triumphantly.) That is 
your reason ! 

Odena. What? 

Emla. This ! {Holding the jug to the mouth of the 
slave.) Drink! {The slave after a wondering moment 
drinks. Emla splashes some of the wine on her and 
hands the jug back to Marta.) Hurry! {Marta goes.) 
Hurry! Get on your head-dress. {Odena goes. To the 
women who have been watching the profanation of the 
tabu in horror and in amazement.) Not a word now or 
after. You shall see. 

{They wait in silence for a moment. Then Odena 
with his head-dress, on which the third horn is now set 
in place, appears. He is followed by Maga, who is 
followed by Akra. Maga bears a pail and Akra a long 
knife, and all three have their mantles on. All the wives 
exclaim at the beauty of the head-dress. At this mo- 
ment, Marta screams from, behind the curtain and ap- 
pears running. After her reels Garthus, beating 
her.) 

Garthus. Why don't you fill the pitcher! Why 
don't you fill the pitcher ! {He sees them all and stag- 
gers to the front.) What's all this.^ {The procession 
has come behind the altar as Garthus staggers below it. 
He sees the slave.) Shall not put her to death I tell 



68 The Craft of the Tortoise Act II 

you ! Will go to war but won't put her to death. 'Fleet 
on me. 

Emla (in a ringing voice). Odena, tell Garthus what 
this slave has done! 

Odena. She has broken the most sacred tabu of the 
patriarchs. She has drunk of the wine of the head of 
the household. 

Garthus (scarcely believing his ears). She? Drunk 
— my wine? (He staggers towards the slave incredu- 
lously and bends over her and sniffs.) The slave has 
'scredited me. And my household. Let her be sac'- 
ficed. 

Emla (as Akra hands Odena the knife). Wait. The 
sacrifice should come last. Tell Garthus what his other 
wives are to be. (As Odena expostulates.) Tell 
him! 

Odena. Garthus, I have invented a new honor for 
you. 

Garthus. Need one. Won't change clothes. Won't 
visit. Can't hunt. Must go to war. For somethin' 
'speccable to do. What is it? 

Odena. The greatest honor ever invented by any 
priest for any patriarch. Your head-wife Emla will do 
all the clothes changing and visiting for you, as you 
yourself suggested. She will do more than this. She 
will do nothing at all. She will illustrate your leisure 
for you. All the other patriarchs will envy your wealth. 
For you have a wife who will spend it for you and do 
nothing at all. 

Garthus. Great idea ! Clever, clever, clever priest ! 

Emla. Go on. 

Odena. But in order that this may be accomplished 
with seemliness, with seemliness — your other wives will 
be — no longer be your other wives. They will be — 
they will be — 

Garthus. What will they be? 

Emla (to the helpless Odena). Go on. 



Act II The Craft of the Tortoise 69 

Odena {floundering more and more). Something 
which is and which is not. 

Akra (suddenly). I have it. {He whispers to 
Odena.) 

Odena (with relief). As I was about to say, they 
will be concubines. 

Garthus. What are conk'bines? 

Emla. That will make no difference to you. As far 
as you are concerned, they will be just the same as 
before. 

Garthus (coming to her with maudlin satisfaction). 
And what will you be, darling Emla? 

Emla (she waves him away; he totters and falls with 
drunken good nature). I shall be just the same as I 
was before, too. Except that I shall be your only wife 
and do nothing but save you from being bored. And get 
you unheard of honor. By reciting your exploits, by 
spending your wealth, and illustrating your leisure. I 
shall do nothing whatever that is productive. (With an 
inspiration^ pointing to the head-dress, she strains hack 
her jaw and then bands her head.) Oh, I shall make 
lovely uncomfortable things like head-dresses! (As the 
curtain falls, Garthus utters feeble hurrahs.) 

CURTAIN. 



ACT III 

The Draperies of Society 

A Gothic garden. In the bach is seen the donjon of 
the castle. Horizontally along the middle of the stage 
runs the hedge which marks the beginning of the gar- 
den, three feet high; in the center the main entrance 
surmounted by an arched trellis. Within the enclosure, 
on the right, is a semi-circular stone bench flanked by 
trvo ornamental box trees in pots. They are clipped into 
approved shape: the one on the left is a cylinder sur- 
mounted by a globe — the one on the right is a square 
surmounted by a triangle standing on its apex and this 
in turn is surmounted by a globe. On the left of the 
entrance a loroer box hedge cuts off the space into an- 
other plot, slanting to the left by steps. This is divided 
at each step by hedges of similar height into little 
squares and oblongs. Within each of these is a center- 
piece of flowers, an aviary, a cage with rabbits, etc. 

The lady of the castle is seated upon the stone bench. 
Her hair, which has just been died yellow with saffron, 
is pulled through a large straw peasant's hat which has 
been made crownless for the occasion; and the locks are 
now drying in the sun. She is a comely, placid, and 
forceless lady ; kindly and well meaning, though neither 
tact nor logic is her strong point. Over her locks bends 
a young woman, bestowing with a brush the finishing 
touches. She is black-browed with a wealth of black 
hair, and a sullen and fierce expression. Conspicuously 
not the cultivated product which the other ladies are, 
she is not only more massively planned but is in her 

70 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 71 

natural proportions entirely/ unrestricted. She is thus in 
decided contrast to the tubular architecture of the lady 
of the castle and her five maidens. These, all with their 
hair loose upon their shoulders, are seated upon the turf 
around the stone bench embroidering. In the bach near 
the entrance sits carding wool an old woman who, it will 
appear, is the country nurse of the young woman who 
has been dyeing the hair. Toward the left sprawls with 
studied picture squeness a troubadour with his lute. He 
has just finished a song as the curtain rises. 

Emelie. But the one touch, Madame. Now all will 
soon be dry. (^She puts aside her brush, sits upon the 
turf with the others, takes up her embroidery frame with 
vexation, and awkwardly begins to work with unac- 
customed fingers.^ 

Marthe. Will it become me, girls? 

Young Ladies {variously^. Beautiful. Exquisite. 
Like gold. The very saffron itself. 

Blanche. Anything would become madame. 

Marthe {raising a hand-glass from her lap). Not 
so bad as I feared. What a pity no one can ever see 
it. Now sing it again. 

RuDEL (singing). Yellow her locks were like gold, 
like saffron that dots the mead. Her eyes — 

Marthe (petulantly). Stop. I don't see why they 
all have them gray-blue. 

RuDEL (reproachfidly). All ladies will soon desire 
your eyes. Madonna. My songs will make you the non- 
pareil. 

Marthe. Nevertheless, there are no stories and 
ballads about brown ones. Emelie, has your nurse no 
way to change the eyes also.^ Nurse, have you no herb 
in your mountains to make brown eyes gray-blue? 

Nurse (^rising to speak in the explosive tone which is 
habitual to her). The hair, yes. But as for the eyes, 
God's will be done. {She sits.) 



72 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Marthe. What a pity ! Emelie_, why did you never 
change your hair? 

Emelie. I saw no reason^ madame. 

Marthe. Poor child, there were no troubadours in 
your mountains to tell you what ladies should look like. 
{The young ladies cast sly glances at each other. It is 
evident they regard Emelie rvith jealousy and treat her 
with covert derision.^ 

Emelie. It would not become me. 

Marthe (rvith suspicion that her taste has been ques- 
tioned). What does that matter.^ No one will ever see 
it except your lover. Unfortunately, as he can never 
tell anyone, it is not very satisfactory. 

Emelie. But your husband? (The young ladies 
titter.) 

Marthe. Why should he think anything about it 
whatever? It would perhaps annoy him if his wife 
proved to have no hair at all. But that is as far as he 
will go. 

Emelie. Still — 

Marthe (vigorously). Don't saw the air and call 
attention to your hands. They look as if they had 
churned and milked. 

Emelie (rebelliously). They have! (The young 
ladies exchange smiles.) 

Marthe. They have no air of fragility. You must 
wear a longer sleeve. If it slopes to the palm, it con- 
fuses the eye and gives the effect. Your shoes were to 
be done today. I said three inches longer than the 
foot but they should be at least five. And if they curl 
up at all, one can guess the exact length of your feet. 
Poor child, your nurse must have allowed you to walk 
on them too much. 

Nurse (rising). WTio was to drive the herd, I should 
like to know? And buy her shoes? (She sits.) 

Marthe (with a slight scream). Barefoot? (The 
young ladies exchange glances.) No wonder her feet 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 73 

spread. Your poor mother would have been scanda- 
lized. Her feet were kept so little they always hurt. 

Emelie (^muttering as she jabs her needle viciously). 
Fine job that! 

Marthe. As for your figure ! One must begin in 
the cradle to have a figure. Girls should never be un- 
swaddled. Unless your ribs are squeezed in while they 
are soft, of course they will expand too much. One 
would not even guess you had stays on. 

Ememe. I haven't. {The young ladies titter.) 

Marthe (reprovingly). Didn't you borrow a pair 
until yours were made? 

Young Ladies (variously). She couldn't get mine 
on. Nor mine. Nor mine. Of course she couldn't get 
mine on. 

Blanche. She couldn't get any of ours on. 

Emelie (bursting out). Why should I cramp my 
body in those things.^ I can't breathe. 

Marthe. A lady is not supposed to breathe in 
gulps. Do you wish to look coarse and strong as a man.'* 
Nature intended women to be delicate and not to re- 
semble men in any way whatever. 

Emelie. Nature intended me to be what I am. 

Marthe. Of course, if you did not assist her. One 
is supposed to assist nature. You must find out what 
nature wants and then assist her. If she had wanted 
you to be a man, she would have made you one, would 
she not? 

Emelie (sulkily). I suppose so. 

Marthe. That is proof positive she wanted you to 
be a woman. Therefore, you should assist her in mak- 
ing you what she wanted. It's as plain as the catechism. 

Nurse (rising). Tie up her body in those things, 
she will have children in pain. And they will be puny. 
(She sits.) 

Marthe (shocked). Women are supposed to have 
children in pain. Doesn't the Bible say so? As for 



74 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

their being puny^ that's as absurd as the other is sacri- 
legious. If men are taller in your country^ why so are 
the mountains? {To Emelie.) Put on your hat and 
let me see if you have learned to walk in it. (The 
young ladies titter in expectation as Emelie gets her hat 
and puts it on. It is a steeple-coch and from the tip 
drags a heavy veil. This obliges the wearer to carry 
the edifice about Jf5 degrees from the perpendicular, 
which alone could mahe it endurable. The weight and 
strain are apparent in Emelie's gait.) Don't walk as 
if it were uncomfortable ! A lady is of course more 
uncomfortable than a peasant but she is not supposed 
to show it. 

Emelie. The veil drags so. 

Marthe. It will be much longer when you are mar- 
ried. Though^ poor child^ you won't have to trouble 
about that. (Warningly.) Eyelids low, eyes on ground 
twelve yards in front, not a glance to right or left. When 
sitting in the presence of gentlemen, always study your 
lap, except for an occasional answer to a question. 
Girls, illustrate. Now! {Young ladies study their laps 
and then direct a startled glance upwards.) There's 
not much use practicing in shoes that fit you. Cant the 
top of you forward to take up the strain on the hat. 
When you have your new shoes on, you must at the same 
time cant your thighs backward to take up the extra 
length at the toes. You can do it easily if you think 
you're made in two sections. Enough for the present. 
{Emelie removes her hat, sits, and jerks up her embroi- 
dery savagely.) Blanche. 

Blanche. Madame ? 

Marthe. Your father has permission from the 
Baron to marry you. 

Blanche {with mild interest). What's his name? 

Marthe {with placid roguishness). Unless he 
changes very much after marriage you will find him 
clean and civil. 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 75 

Blanche {rising nervously). Oh madame! Do I 
know him? 

Marthe. One of our own young men. 

Blanche {with increasing apprehension). Oh ma- 
dame! It is not fair. To marry me to someone I 
already know. 

Marthe {sternly). Are you objecting? To a match 
your father and the Baron have made for you? 

Blanche. No_, madame. But which^ which is he? 

Marthe. Hugh de Losan. 

Blanche {with a cry). Oh madame, my heart told 
me ! Let me speak with you alone. 

Marthe. Blanche? Leave us. 

{The young ladies go out left by Center. Emelie 
goes out Left front, followed by the nurse bearing her 
hat.) 

Blanche {as Rudel rises also). No, let him stay. 

Marthe {suspiciously). Him? Very well, remain. 

Blanche {walking up and down in agitation until the 
others have departed, then in a low despairing voice.) 
Madame, I must break the vow of secrecy. I cannot, 
will not, marry Hugh de Losan. I — I have accepted 
him as my lover. 

Marthe {with consternation). My poor child, what 
a catastrophe! {After a moment.) Why did you ask 
that Rudel remain? 

Blanche {wildly). To advise us! 

Marthe. He has not — not been making love to you 
himself? 

Blanche. Oh no, madame! 

Rudel {reproachfully). Divinity, what suspicions! 

Marthe. You're the only troubadour who praises 
brown eyes. 

Rudel. They are yours, goddess. 

Marthe. Hers too. I'm not going to have my trou- 
dabour make songs that I pay for to someone else. 

Rudel. My queen! 



76 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Marthe. Well^ I never asked you to swim a river 
or leap a chasm. You're not mixing me up with your 
other lady? 

RuDEL. Enchantress^ I meant that I would if you 
did. I have many mouths to feed. I must have many 
voices. But I have only one heart. 

Blanche. How can you talk of songs when my 
heart is breaking? Think of my position. My father 
commands me to marry my lover ! 

Marthe {with the utmost sympathy). But I don't 
see what can be done about it. (To Rudel.) Do you? 

RuDEL. In what degree is he your lover? 

Blanche. All of them. 

RuDEL. He went through the four degrees with 
regularity? He hesitated and you encouraged him? 
When you honored him, he confessed his pangs. You 
retained him? Then when you raised him to the degree 
of one listened to, you granted him a kiss? And the 
rest in due course? 

Blanche. Yes. 

Rudel. I fear if he becomes your husband you have 
degraded yourself. The only chance is some flaw in 
the ceremony. Describe it exactly. 

Blanche. He placed himself on his knees before 
me. Both knees in plumb, his two hands joined between 
mine. He swore he thus devoted himself to me and 
would obey orders. I raised him to his feet and led 
him with a chain of floAvers tied with one of my hairs. 
In token he was my slave. 

Rudel. How can he be your husband, having 
solemnly sworn by all the ceremonies his life-long de- 
votion ! 

Marthe. You'll both have to put up with it as best 
you can. Much good it would do you anyway, to refuse 
to marry him. 

Blanche. But madame ! I have promised Henri de 
Beuve to take him for my servant in case I lost Hugh. 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 77 

Marthe. You told him? Told him the name of 
your lover? 

Blanche. Oh no, madame. But I know he sus- 
pects. And when I marry Hugh, he will claim my 
promise. 

Marthe. Well, what is there so dreadful about 
that? He is clean, and has nice manners. Besides, 
when Hugh marries you, he will naturally cease to be 
your lover and go elsewhere. 

Blanche (sobbing). But I don't want him to go 
elsewhere and I don't want to go elsewhere either. 

Marthe. Oh yes, you will. When he can command 
your favors, he will no longer desire them. (Blanche 
sobs the louder, she goes on consolingly). You will 
change your mind after you've been married a while. 

Blanche. I won't ! I won't ! 

Marthe; (sternly). A lady must do as other ladies 
do. Are the laws of society to be overturned on your 
account? (A horn blows). Botheration! See who it 
is arriving. If it is a knight, he will sit at the gate 
until I come out to meet him. And I can't put on my 
wimple until my hair is quite dry. (Blanche goes right 
by Center.) It can't be Heloise so early. (To Rudel.) 
What can two such clean and civil fellows see in that 
poor simpleton? 

Rudel. Flower of the earth ! Eyes for the milky 
way in face of the effulgent moon? 

Marthe (much pleased). You have not said that to 
your other lady? 

Rudel. Super-eminence! My heart is here always. 
Double my wages and my voice will be here always. 

Marthe. When you sing to her, do you think of 
me? 

Rudel. She is only an accident — of my having 
many mouths to feed. If she doubles my wages, I 
could afford to be your slave for nothing. 

(He goes Right front as Liane is seen at the back. 



78 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

She is a charming, aristocratic, and richly dressed wo- 
man of thirty. Her figure presents the same tubular 
effect as that of the others, though her clothes, of the 
same style, have an elegance that is indefinably of the 
city. Her wimple, under which is visible the structure 
of two enormous side-rolls of coiffure, completely covers 
her hair with the exception of two gigantic braids which 
hang almost to her feet, one on each side. These braids, 
however, are entirely encased in white cloth, laced with 
ribbons. After her comes a tall and powerful peasant. 
He bears awkwardly in both arms a huge wicker bird- 
cage open at the top. In this on a cross-piece standing 
"T" shaped from the bottom is a gaily colored parrot. 
After the man comes Blanche, who ushers them in and 
goes out left behind the hedge. 

LiANE (as she comes) . Sister ! 

Marthe. Liane! How delightful and unexpected! 

LiANE. Dear Marthe! 

Marthe. I am dyeing my hair. I don't dare get 
up in this hat. 

Liane (gaily as she pulls off her gauntlets and hands 
them to the man, who gases awkwardly over the cage). 
Set it down. My parrot from Turkey. I have made 
them all the fashion. I take him everywhere with me. 
Designed the cage myself. Open at the top, so that 
Sultan may come out when he pleases. (To the man.) 
Here, you must learn to take these, so, and bow. (He 
takes them.) There! (Coming to Marthe and seizing 
her hands.) Sister! 

Marta. How do you like it? 

Liane. Fortunately no one will see it. 

Marthe (crossly). They are forever talking and 
singing of our hair, yet we must always keep it covered 
up. If it is so beautiful, why may we not show it to 
men? 

Liane. My dear, if you begin to speculate why men 
want women to do what they do, you will never finish. 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 79 

The wise woman always does what they want and has 
her own way at the same time. They want us to have 
lots of hair and not show it. Very well^ behold me_, 
do I not manage? 

Marthe. Why, Liane, your braids? Have they 
something to make it grow in Paris? 

LiANE (lifting up her braids). Oh, yes! Though 
they show, they do not show. It is very fortunate. 

Marthe. But you used to have so little. 

LiANE. And so I said when I was a girl, "Thank 
God men want the wimple, though God knows why." 
For it hid how little I had. And still I say "Thank 
God men want the wimple though God knows why." 
For it hides how much I have. (Laughing, she undoes 
her wimple, throws it aff, disclosing her monstrous coif- 
fure.) In Paris only the queen may show her hair, con- 
sequently she hasn't as much as I have. Indeed, poor 
creature, her hair is quite scraggy. She has nothing to 
pin more onto. 

Marthe (scrutinizing her). But it is not only that 
there is more hair. 

LiANE (laughing). It is also that there is less. I 
have no eyebrows. 

Marthe. Poor Liane! You have scorched them off 
with your paint. 

Liane. An idea of my own. 

Marthe (amazed). What for? 

Liane. I said to myself, "God knows why men and 
priests desire women not to show their hair. It is stu- 
pid but I must take things as I find them. Very well, 
they shall see even less than they see now." Off go 
my eyebrows. The effect is amusing and charming. In 
a short while there are no female eyebrows in Paris. 
Even the queen shaves hers off, pretending she thought 
of it first. Poor creature, she lacks logic as well as 
ideas. Since she shows the hair on her head, the effect 
is one of poverty. 



80 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Marthe. But at first? Were people not scandal- 
ized? 

LiANE. Br-r-r-r-r ! The Cardinal comes to see me. 

Marthe. You? 

LiANE. "My daughter, this is a grievous sin; the 
Church forbids women to cut their hair." I am covered 
with confusion and astonishment. "Father !" I cry. 
"The Church commands a woman not to show her hair. 
If I have committed sin, it was to avoid sin. Also I did 
not cut; I shaved." 

Marthe. The Cardinal came to see you? 

LiANE. I'm very important to the Cardinal. "My 
daughter, you must get more money from the Count for 
the new Cathedral of Notre Dame. It will go far to 
cleanse you of your evil life. — My daughter, get the 
Count to oppose the English alliance. It will go far 
to cleanse you of your evil life. — My daughter, the 
Countess has smiled upon the Albigensian heretic, bid 
the Count be stricter with his other household. It will 
go far to cleanse you of your evil life." Oh, I am of 
great service to his Reverence. Besides, he pinches my 
chin. 

Marthe {mournfully^. The queen, the Cardinal! 
Twenty miles to Paris, and yet I have never been there. 
I go nowhere, see no one. A few knights and squires, 
the Bishop perhaps. Who would not have said that 
I was the most fortunate of us three girls ! Yet I am 
only a housekeeper, a manager. You two are powers in 
the great world. Heloise, the Abbess of Saint Deniers; 
you, Liane, the — the 

LiANE. Mistress of the Count. 

Jean {who at the gate has been growing more and 
more restless). Pardon, madame ! Am I not to bring 
in the hay? 

Marthe (in surprise). What are you doing here? 

Liane. At the gate I saw him cross the road. "My 
God," said I, "he is the very giant I seek. Here my 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 81 

man/' I called. "Take my parrot and follow." Give 
him to me. 

Marthe {amazed). Have you not men of the 
Count's .'' 

LiANE. I have reviewed them all. I was in despair. 
"But wait," said I, "the country air and milk have per- 
haps composed a bigger giant than we have in town." 
Here I am. And there he is. 

Marthe. What do you want him for.^* 

LiANE. To carry my parrot. 

Marthe. Your parrot? My best farmer? 

LiANE. Another of my ideas. 1 behold there is no 
woman in all Paris with a man for a lackey. And even 
the Count's lackeys are boys. An idea knocks at my 
ear. "Liane/' I say, "'why not the biggest man in all 
Paris just to stand upon your staircase? The Count 
will be enchanted ; all Paris will be enchanted. The stu- 
pid Countess — the poor queen — all will follow thy ex- 
ample." I remember when a girl this Jean. I am come. 
Behold him. He will be most imposing with my parrot. 

Marthe. I cannot spare my best farmer. 

Liane. Two men or three can take his place. 

Marthe. He has a family. 

Liane. They may go or stay as you will. If they 
go, they will be glad. If they stay, he will be glad. 
That is their affair. 

Marthe. But my husband. He will never consent. 

Liane (laughing confidently). We shall see. (Ta 
Jean.) Go and wind up affairs. {Jean goes.) 

Marthe. But where did you get this idea ? 

Liane. It is not difficult. Unless a man has two 
establishments in Paris, he is not of the great world. 
We don't keep such matters secret as one is taught to 
do in the provinces. In Paris a man says, "What is the 
good of a mistress unless people know it?" Since there 
are two establishments, the man will take more pride 
in that which does him the more honor. It is display 



82 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

which honors a man. For display I have each day a new 
idea. I hold the Count by my ideas. 

Marthe. But when you shall no longer hold him, 
my poor sister? 

LiANE. My poor sister, it is all very simple. Why 
are you married.^ Because, being the eldest of three 
daughters, you go with the land. Heloise, the next, 
having no one to desire her since she has no land, goes 
into the Church. I, the third, what am I to do.'' Even 
so young, I am a creature of ideas. "Listen, Liane," I 
say, "no one will marry you, you will not marry the 
Church. Go to Paris where a man boasts of his mis- 
tress to the world. Not as here to himself only. Have 
new ideas every day, but take care that he pays for all. 
Why not, it is for his honor? Put away, coin by coin, 
jewel by jewel. Then if the day comes when neither 
your ideas nor charms may longer hold him, where are 
you? You buy land and someone will desire to marry 
you for your property." And so I shall end where 
my poor sister began, and meanwhile life amuses me. 
Does life amuse you? But no, that is not a fair ques- 
tion. You see, it is all very simple. 

Marthe {feebly). But it is immoral. 

Liane {surprised). Have you not, has not every 
woman a lover? 

Marthe. That is very different. No one knows 
about it. 

Liane. Be logical. A matter of knowledge is not 
a matter of morality. For the rest, I but save his pres- 
ents instead of using them like you. 

Marthe. But a lady's lover gives her nothing she 
can use. Otherwise people would see and guess. My 
poor child, gifts that can be used are immoral. 

Liane {laughing) . So be it, that I am. 

Marthe. And think of what you lose. 

Liane. The Cardinal comes to see me, the world is 
on my staircase, the queen copies me. What do I lose? 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 83 

Let others puzzle their heads about what things should 
be and what should not. I puzzle mine with original 
ideas. How to make use of the amusing pretences with 
which the world is full. If the world were different, 
my ideas would be different. No one looks down upon 
my children because I am not the Countess. If that 
should ever happen, then I grant you I should be los- 
ing something. As it is, what.^ Two things I may pur- 
chase when I please. A name and a girdle. 

Marthe. a girdle? 

LiANE. The poor queen with her stringy hair which 
she alone may show, will not let us wear our girdles 
unless we have names. Why she hit upon a girdle, God 
knows. But very well. I have made girdles unfashion- 
able. Even the queen would take hers off now, but it 
would make her ridiculous. Some day when I may 
no longer set the fashion, I shall follow fashions set 
by other ladies with no names or girdles. It is amusing ! 

Marthe (plaintively). It is all very mixed up. 

LiANE. My dear, I look upon the world and find 
everything mixed up. The Cardinal scolds me in gen- 
eral in the pulpit — Brrrr! But in particular he visits 
me and asks my assistance. (She purrs.) So it is 
everywhere with men. Everywhere pretences. As for 
women, I need not tell you what they pretend. I ask 
myself will the poor world ever be logical. I answer 
impossible. But if so, a clever woman will make the 
best of it. Yet then it will be difficult. For if man 
were not pretending, I could not flatter him by telling 
him he is what he isn't. Man's illogicality is woman's 
opportunity. 

Marthe (as a horn blows). Oh, perhaps that is 
Heloise ! 

LiANE. Heloise ? 

Marthe. She sent me word. (Embarrassed.) You 
see I didn't know you were coming. 

LiANE (laughing merrily at her embarrassment) . Too 



84 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

late now. (Walking aside.) But the Abbess is used to 
black sheep. 

(Heloise enters. The Abbess of St. Deniers is a 
stately, able, authoritative woman of about 33 years. 
Her dress is rich and elegant, as becomes a baroness 
in her own right. Under it is to be seen the tubular 
architecture evidenced by all the other ladies. Accord- 
ing to the habit of the times, the sole badge of her of- 
fice is a white turban, the drapery of which entirely 
conceals her hair; but over it and the drapery floats a 
long purple veil. She has been accompanied to the gate 
by two nuns, dressed aristocratically but alike. She 
dismisses them with a wave of her hand, and they go 
out left.) 

Heloise. I knew I should find you here. Oh^ the 
time Tou have to waste ! 

Marthe, My dear sister ! 

Heloise (most warmly). Marthe! 

Marthe. Excuse tliis hat. my hair is drying. (In a 
low voice, embarrassed.) Heloise^ Liane. If you would 
rather 

Heloise (greeting her most warmly). Liane! 

Li AXE. You have a new veil. I told you the red 
one was unbecoming. 

Marthe (surprised though relieved). You meet some- 
times then? 

Liaxe, Often. 

Heloise. Various matters to consult about. 

Marthe (sighing with plaintive good humor). I go 
nowhere. Not since we were girls have we three been 
together. 

Heloise. First, the matter on which you wrote me, 

Marthe. Tell me^ is my new hair becoming? 

Heloise. My dear^ business before pleasure. 

Marthe. But 

Liaxe (laughing). Perhaps I'm in your way. 

Marthe. No, dear. (Embarrassed, she decides to 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 85 

begin.) Since my letter comes another most important 
matter. Now I shall have your advice on both. It was 
Emelie I wrote you of. You remember our mother's old 
friend in the mountains? After her death, her hus- 
band was given the property of a widow in the south. 
He left his two children to get along as best they could. 
The land could only fit out the boy and keep him in 
Paris. The little girl ran wild with her peasant nurse 
and has grown up a shocking savage. Her chest is posi- 
tively robust ! I thought I could do no less for her 
mother's sake, than give her the education of a lady. 
But, poor child, her father and her brother will never 
do anything for her of course. What shall I do with 
her when I make her a lady.^" She must become either a 
nun or — or 

LiANE (brisJcly). Or the supported mistress of a 
man of her own rank. Yes? 

Marthe. Well, since you mention it. I thought you 
had done so splendidly. Wrong as it all seems to my 
old-fashioned ideas ! If you had rather not stay, 
dear ? 

Heloise. Why the embarrassment? 

Marthe (nervously). It's very foolish, of course. 

Heloise. My dear child! Women who are born to 
property have no occasion to think, but women who 
are not must think clearly and speak frankly. In our 
civilization — which we must believe is the best so far, 
since it sets a superstructure of Christianity upon a 
Greek and Roman foundation — in our civilization, a 
woman has no place in the scheme of things except as 
attached to something. If no man makes her his wife, 
she may marry the Church. If neither happens, she 
must attach herself to some man irregularly. Failing 
the three, she starves. Since this Emelie has no prop- 
erty, unquestionably no man will marry her. She must 
therefore marry the Church legally or some man ille- 
gally. Or shall we say, colloquially? 



86 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Marthe (more embarrassed at this candid speech). 
Wel^ then, that seeming to be the case — distressing as it 
is 

Heloise. You want to know which career will be 
better for her. 

Marthe. My dear, you take my breath away. 

Heloise. Nonsense_, my dear. You didn't expect a 
nun to have the silly pruderies of a wife, did you? 
What has she to bring to the cloister? 

Marthe (feebly). I thought she came because she 
couldn't bring anything. 

Heloise. My dear! All convents have more appli- 
cants than they can accept. Consequently, selection is 
necessary. What is her particular fitness for the life 
of a nun? 

Marthe (plaintively). Only that no one wants her. 
She is not meek; she is not self-effacing; she has no 
notion of woman's first duty, self-sacrifice. 

Heloise. My dear, you talk like a country sermon. 
I am the last person to depreciate the idea of self- 
sacrifice as an abstract religious principle. But a con- 
vent is an institution which church and society have de- 
vised as the best means to dispose of the unattached 
woman. And if she ever really went to it to illustrate 
self-sacrifice, she certainly does so no longer. 

Marthe. Not self-sacrifice ! 

Liane (impatiently). My dear! It is not self-sac- 
rifice to find some place to go to. 

Heloise. Self-sacrifice is not, in our civilization, 
either the motive or the result of going into a convent. 
Look at ourselves. As things have turned out, it is you, 
poor dear, who are sacrificed. Besides, I have traveled 
all over Europe; you never leave your castle. I meet 
my equals every^vhere at all times and on equal foot- 
ing; you meet only your inferiors, who flatter you for 
their own reasons. I have studied the Latin poets and 
the Greek philosophers; you can, at a pinch^ write a 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 87 

letter^ but you never see a book. I am a landlord to my 
own right; you hold your own fief by consent of an- 
other. I have two incomes^ spiritualities from my 
churches and temporalities from my lands; you are your 
husband's steward and can't spend your own money 
without his permission. I may send my men-at-arms 
where I will; yours must go where they are bid. We 
nuns are the only women in the world who are eco- 
nomically free. In our civilization a convent offers a 
woman her only chance of self-development. 

LiANE. Ahem! Have I not developed myself? 

Heloise. Well^ at least_, the home offers her no 
chance whatever. Your Emelie's qualifications for the 
convent ? 

Marthe. I — I suppose she has the virtues of any 
young woman of her class. 

Heloise. Perhaps her vices show more individuality. 

Marthe. She is rebellious. 

Heloise. Good. We want women of moral and 
physical courage. 

LiANE. Bad for me. You must seem to rebel but 
submit. It is the way to be charming. 

Marthe. She is proud. 

LiANE. Bad. You must seem to be proud but not 
be. It is the way to be charming. 

Heloise. Good for me. A woman who is to be in- 
dependent of a man has a right to be proud. 

Marthe. She complains of the lot to which heaven 
has called her. (Liane shows impatience.^ 

Heloise. I begin to be interested in your Emelie. 
But I am a business woman conducting a business en- 
terprise. My convent must keep up its reputation. 
Has she head enough to become a scholar, or will she 
read and write only a little better than the average 
man? Has she skilful hands. Can she become an ar- 
tist, a physician? My nuns must all be capable of dis- 
tinguished work. 



88 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Marthe. I thought she had only to say her prayers 
and fast and that sort of thing. 

Heloise. My dear^ "why come to a convent to do 
what she can do at home? 

Marthe. But she has no home. She has to go some- 
where. 

Heloise. Convents cannot become over-crowded sim- 
ply because women have no other place to go. 

Marthe. It is all very confusing. Perhaps it is my 
hat. 

Heloise. My dear ! In our civilization a woman 
must either by her property or her personality win the 
favor of an individual man. Otherwise^ she starves or 
goes into a convent. If a convent^ she finds no men 
there. Consequently, in a convent, she is judged for the 
first time as men are judged. For her merits rather 
than for her charms. As a mistress, she is judged by 
her charms. As a wife, she is judged by neither. The 
day may come when civilization will permit a woman 
to marry as a profession. That is^ to capture what hus- 
band she wishes, not merely because she has property 
but by reason of her charm also. At present, she may 
by the latter capture only a lover. As, theoretically 
speaking, there are no lovers in convents, an unattached 
woman who has charm should not select a convent as a 
field to exhibit it in. There it is merit and not charm 
that tells. But one cannot expect the day will ever come 
when a man will marry a woman without property for 
her merits. Consequently if she is ever to develop her 
merits, it must be in the cloister. I am a business 
woman conducting a business enterprise but I have 
also the future of woman at heart. Do you not see 
then that it is a good thing for religion and for so- 
ciety, as well as for my convent, that I select girls be- 
cause they are able to be and do something? 

Marthe. But the priests tell us 

Heloise {for the first time betraying impatience^. 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 89 

The priests ! They have no education whatever. They 
know nothing of the past^ so how can they have the 
future at heart? Particularly of women. 

Marthe. But self-sacrifice is such a sweet idea. For 
poor girls who need comfort because they have no place 
to go. 

Heloise. The convents of Europe are overflowing 
with applicants. If the day ever comes when the sac- 
rifices are greater than the rewards, or if she has to 
sacrifice more there than at home, I predict there will 
be no waiting-list. 

Marthe. Why do they tell us about it, then? 

Heloise. I am the last person to depreciate self- 
sacrifice as an abstract religious principle. But they 
tell us self-sacrifice because they wish us to make a vir- 
tue of a necessity. It is well to make one's necessity 
a means of grace. On the whole it is a wise policy. 
Especially when women can get round it, as we do in the 
convent. 

Heloise. Then Emelie? 

Heloise. Liane and I will quietly observe her. To 
see whether she will succeed through her merits or her 
charms. The other case. 

Marthe. Blanche. {Impressively.^ Her father 
has picked out her lover to be her husband. 

Liane. My God! 

Marthe. But worse. She has a lover on the waiting 
list. I tell her if she marries the present one, of course 
she must accept the other. Or she has lost her honor 
and is degraded. 

Liane. It is too ridiculous, how marriage compli- 
cates everything ! 

Heloise {hesitating). Officially, I am not justified 
in pronouncing an opinion. 

Liane {laughing). Oh, poor Heloise! Of course an 
Abbess may have no opinion . 

Heloise {warmly). Not officially. However, I am 



90 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

also a woman interested in the advancement of women. 
Naturally_, this Blanche must marry where she is bid. 
Ipso facto, her husband then ceases to be her lover. Are 
you sure she has compromised herself with the second 
one.'' 

Marthe. She has accepted his presents in the name 
of love. 

Heloise. Then if she violates her oath, she is doub- 
ly degraded. A woman must either refuse presents 
offered in the name of love_, or accept them with the un- 
derstanding that she rewards them when free. When 
her other lover frees her — that is, marries her — she must 
accept him. 

Marthe. But she refuses. 

Heloise (with authority). She must accept him. 

LiANE (laughing). Oh, my poor Heloise! An ab- 
bess prescribe a lover ! 

Heloise. I speak not as abbess but as woman in- 
terested in the advancement of women. I hope I'm 
not unworthy of my calling. But I am a scholar and 
have pondered the teachings of history. If a lady is 
allowed to break the laws of love, now at last formu- 
lated, the advancement of woman is threatened. 

Liane (much interested). Begone, Abbess; speak, 
woman ! 

Heloise. Marriage is a matter of securing property 
rights. Man has never thought that love and marriage 
except by accident went together. The Greeks and 
Romans looked to their wives only for lawful offspring, 
their love they found elsewhere. Their opinion is voiced 
by Metellus. "If we could get along without wives, 
we should all dispense with the nuisance." When Chris- 
tianity came along it too considered marriage a duty 
rather than a pleasure, though a duty man would do 
well to escape if he could and woman if she must But 
the theory still remained as before. Man desires mar- 
riage only for economic considerations. 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 91 

Marthe {weakly^. Could this yellow have gone to 
my head? 

LiANE {impatiently'). You had the property. There- 
fore you were married. Married early and often. 

Heloise. Now^ for the first time in the history of 
civilization woman is theoretically admitted to be man's 
equal. In one respect only. Her attitude toward mar- 
riage. 

LiANE AND Marthe. How? 

Heloise. She objects to it also. 

Marthe {warmly). They take it when they can get 
it. 

Heloise. So do men. Because of property. Men 
object to it because it curtails their liberty. Not so 
women^ for they never had any liberty to curtail. But 
the objection is in reality the same. That it destroys 
love. Love can exist, say women, only where it is free 
and unbound. Thus for the first time do men meet 
women on a common ground as equals. This, the truth, 
is important; but the humbug is even more impor- 
tant. 

LiANE. Humbug ? 

Heloise. To secure this equality, woman has made 
use of man's greatest weakness. His much-boasted 
ability to make a woman fall in love with him. And she 
has secured not only equality but her theoretical superi- 
ority also. The male, however, does not admit the su- 
periority of the female. Only the lover admits the 
superiority of his mistress. Hence it is not true but 
humbug. Nevertheless, the pretence is of the utmost 
importance, since no man ever pretended it before. It 
is by pretences that civiKzation arose, and it is because 
of this greatest of pretences that our civilization is 
greater than those which have gone before. 

Marthe. My dear, you make my head swim. Or is 
it this hat? 

Heloise. A woman cannot choose her husband but 



92 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

she can choose her lover. Hence the husband does not 
have to please the wife^ but the lover has to please the 
mistress. The man who praises her most pleases her 
best. Furthermore, circumstances sometimes compelled 
him to make his rhetoric good or become ridiculous. 
Thus his diction forced him into action. Especially 
those professional lovers, poets and troubadours. Fur- 
thermore, a man may behave as he pleases to his wife, 
and neither Church nor State can prevent. But he may 
not behave as he pleases to his mistress, or she will 
choose another lover. Thus the attitude of man toward 
woman has changed though his distaste for marriage re- 
mains the same. Not because of his recognition of the 
rights of his wife, for she has none. But because of the 
demands of his mistress, who has at last elevated love 
into a game like fencing, with its own rules and regula- 
tions. 

LiANE {demurely^. I always knew I was an impor- 
tant person. 

Heloise. As an abbess, I do not condone the break- 
ing of the marriage vow. But as a woman of the world, 
I see that nobody keeps it anyway. And as a logical 
student of history, I see that marriage existed before 
Christianity, that it is still not founded upon love or free 
will, and that Christianity in itself affords a woman 
even fewer rights than did the Greeks and Romans. 
For though she was divorced oftener, she herself could 
divorce in return. It is love and not religion that has 
advanced woman. Hence your Blanche must not dis- 
credit the laws of love, for profane as they are they 
have elevated woman more than Christianity has ever 
done. 

Marthe. This hat seems to overpower me. Is my 
hair quite dry? 

LiANE {examining her hair). My dear, your doc- 
trines are not Christian, they must be dangerous. Yes, 
it is quite dry. 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 93 

Marthe. Then take it off. I feel as if I was stand- 
ing upon my head. 

LiANE (taking it off). Are you sure Christians were 
meant to survey the past? 

Heloise. When men change their ridiculous logic, 
I will change mine. 

LiANE. How change their logic? 

Heloise. Since Christianity came in^ both man and 
the Church have treated marriage with profound illogi- 
cality. Because they have sought to elevate a transfer 
of property into a matter of sentiment. And both of 
them unite in saying "with all my worldly goods I thee 
endow" when the woman who couldn't be married ex- 
cept for her property does the only endowing there is 
in the business. But I predict that if marriage ever 
does become a matter of sentiment, then indeed the 
Church will be right in saying that it demands of a 
woman self-sacrifice. (Jean passes the hedge.) 

Marthe (much shocked). My dear! Oh, Jean, here 
is your hat. 

Jean (ruefully regarding the crown). I can't buy 
another till Michelmas. 

LiANE (laughing). You won't need it on my stair- 
case. Shall we not have the damsels in? 

Marthe. Summon my damsels. (Jean goes.) I 
may announce you? 

Liane. Well thought of. I have a new name. An- 
other of my ideas. Lady No Girdle. Madame Sans- 
Ceintre. Since the queen forbids me to wear my girdle, 
I have made a droll name of it. (To Heloise.) The 
Church would have women make their necessity a virtue? 
Behold how instinctively I follow its teaching. When 
there is something I can't help, I make it more than a 
virtue. A decoration. (The young ladies enter at the 
back very demurely. They have great curiosity as to 
the visitors.) 

Marthe (as they come). The first is Blanche. The 



94 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

black one is Emelie. Why, Emelie is not here. {Aloud.) 
Young ladies, my sisters. The Abbess Saint Deniers 
and Madame — Madame Sans-Ceintre. {The young la- 
dies, in the midst of the second demure how, stop and 
stare at Liane's lack of girdle.) Be seated. {They all 
sit down at ease upon the ground and dispense at once 
with demureness. They exchange sly looks, apparently 
on the subject of Liane's name.) The Abbess will now 
give us some edifying remarks. 

{Emelie is seen coming along the back of the hedge, 
her nurse expostulating with her.) 

Nurse. I tell you you will be sick. You will die! 

Emelie. Let me alone! Don't be a fool! 

Nurse. You will ruin yourself entirely! 

Emelie. Let me alone I say! {She enters, followed 
by the nurse. Under her loose gown it is seen that her 
figure has become tubular. She is breathing cautiously. 
The stays, like those of the other ladies, enclose her 
entire trunk tightly and give no effect of expansion at 
the bosom.) 

Marthe. Emelie ! 

Emelie {in a tone rebellious and cramped). Madame! 

Marthe. Oh, your stays have come. 

Nurse {indignantly). Look at her! Where I ask 
you has the rest of her gone to? {The young ladies 
titter merrily.) The good god never meant that your 
outsides should be your insides. 

Marthe. Silence, nurse! The good god meant 
women to look as though they might break. But they 
never do, so don't be impious. 

Nurse. Where I ask you have her breasts gone? 
Her lights? Her 

Marthe. Silence! {To Emelie.) You look very 
nice, my dear. 

Emelie {grimly). Thanks, Madame. {She sways 
and falls into the arms of the Nurse, who lets her ten- 
derly to the ground.) 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 95 

Nurse. My lamb! (Angrily.) I told you I ought 
not to strap them as tight as I could. She will 
die! 

Blanche. Nonsense. That often happens. 

Marthe (plaintively). Of course, if you tried to do 
the work of fifteen years in a minute ! If you had kept 
her ribs soft with swaddling bands, they would bend in 
more easily. 

LiANE. My God, what hair the child has! 

Emelie (to the nurse). Go away! I'm all right. 

LiANE (desiring to help her hy easing the situation). 
Madame Abbess, you were to edify us. Why do men 
praise our hair yet never permit us to show it? 

Heloise. The subject upon which I am asked to dis- 
course is, like all of our customs, a primitive survival 
modified by Christianity. The hair was once considered 
a source and later a symbol of strength. To cut it was 
a mutilation performed by the powerful upon the weak. 
In the pre-Roman civilization of these regions, an un- 
married girl wore her hair loose and flowing. On her 
wedding day, she herself cut it off to show that she had 
become a servant to her husband. 

Liane. Cut it oif ? No husband is worth it. 

Heloise. The Roman bride only pretended it was 
cut by binding it upon the head. With Christianity, the 
hair took another aspect. The Scripture says that it is 
the crowning glory of women. But being her crowning 
glory, it was often her crowning allurement and hence 
her crowning shame. If allurement it should be hid. If 
glory it should be sacrificed. Thus we see that the cus- 
tom of hiding the hair indicates in its heathen origin the 
weakness and slavery of woman, and in its beautiful 
Christian significance the allurement to man which is 
her natural depravity and the sacrifice to man which 
is her natural duty. 

Young Ladies (variously). How sweet! How nice! 
Self sacrifice is so lovely! 



96 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Jean {appearing at gate). The master has returned 
from hunting. And with him^ the Bishop. {He goes. 
All the ladies at once ]Dut on their wimples. These the 
young ladies have been carrying on their arms or as 
scarfs. Emelie, however, drops hers suddenly over the 
low hedge. But, like the others, she rises as the Sieur 
Guillaume de la Garthelaud, the Bishop, Hugh de Losan, 
and several other young gentlemen enter. One sees at 
once from Blanche*s behavior that Hugh is her lover, 
Guillaume is a healthy, active, animal nature, endowed 
with no graces of mind or deportment, but with as much 
social veneer as was deemed sufficient for a man 
of his time, whose chief contribution to society was his 
strong arm; nor is he without a certain childlike charm 
of naive assurance, varied with naive bewilderment upon 
encountering anything he cannot understand. He is ac- 
companied by the Bishop of Orleans. Acrinus of Or- 
leans is attired according to his fancy, as were most 
clericals of the time. He affects all the extravagances 
of the exquisite of his day, and the only sign of his re- 
ligious function is his tonsure. His hair is long, and 
his clothes suggest more a military than a clerical. He 
has a knife attached to his richly ornamented girdle, 
many rings upon his fingers, green shoes highly turned 
up at the toes; and upon his hand is perched a hunting 
hawk.) 

Marthe (going and kneeling to him for his blessing). 
Father ! 

Acrinus. My daughter! 

Marthe (rising and introducing). My sisters. The 
Abbess of Saint Deniers. (The gentlemen all bow, the 
Bishop with marked coldness.) Madame — Madame 
Sans-Ceintre. (All the gentlemen in the act of bowing 
stop and stare at Liane's lack of girdle.) His Rever- 
ence, Bishop Acrinus of Orleans. My husband, Sieur 
Guillaume de la Garthelaud. (Guillaume and the Bishop 
walk at once to Liane.) 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 97 

Heloise (quietly to Marthe). Emelie has not put on 
her wimple. 

Marthe (in consternation). Emelie! {Turning to 
her.) Your wimple! 

Emelie (putting her hands to her head, and in a loud 
voice which attracts the attention of all). My wimple! 

Young Ladies (scandalized hut in tones colored with 
jealousy, annoyance, or malice). She has not put it 
on! 

GuiLLAUME (lustfully). What hair ! 

LiANE (to herself). She has lost it on purpose. 

Marthe (severely). A lady should always have it 
ready in case gentlemen arrive. 

AcRiNus (significantly). My child_, no woman loses 
her wimple. Sometimes she forgets where she last put 
it. 

Emelie (her arms clasped over her head, as if to hide 
her hair). Nurse^ where is my wimple? (She takes a 
threatening step forward as the nurse in bewilderment 
turns towards the hedge.) 

Nurse (understanding Emelie' s intention, and throw-- 
ing up her hands in noisy despair). My child has lost 
her wimple ! My child has lost her wimple ! 

GuiLLAUME AND HuGH (stepping toward Emelie). 
Where did you have it last? How could you have lost 
it? 

Marthe (stopping Guillaume). No, let her find it 
herself ! 

Blanche (stopping Hugh). Hugh, how should you 
know where her wimple is? 

Heloise (quietly after all this confusion). Take my 
veil. (She puts her purple veil over Emelie's head. It 
completely covers her hair, which, however, shows dis- 
tinctly through it). 

Emelie. Oh, thank you. Reverend Mother! Mon- 
sieur, Sieurs, Reverend Father ! I am covered with 
confusion. 



98 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Marthe {aside to Heloise and Liane). She is hope- 
less. For all of us ! 

Liane. She has a career. 

Heloise. 1 will take her. (Marthe is much mysti- 
fied.) 

AcRiNUS (angrily, as Guillaume laughs). It is no 
laughing matter. She may be clever^ she may be stupid. 
Either way, she is impossibly so. 

Marthe (anxious to recover from the unfortunate in- 
cident). Father, will you address a few words to the 
young and heedless.^ 

AcRiNus (looking sternly at Emelie). Young ladies, 
a few remarks on the whole duty of women. In the 
very beginning God demonstrated, as St. Augustine so 
beautifully observes, that woman should be in subjec- 
tion. Since He refused to make her in His own image. 
But no sooner was she created than he put her under a 
curse, for the mischief she had wrought upon innocent 
man. Thus her subjection and her depravity go hand 
in hand. When Christianity came to the world, it found 
her everywhere in subjection as was meet and proper. 
But did it abandon her to her inferior state .^ No, rec- 
ognizing that Original Sin came through woman, it il- 
lustrated the beautiful doctrine of forgiveness. By ele- 
vating an institution of the state into a sacrament of 
the Church, it protected inferior woman as never be- 
fore. Under Roman Law there was nothing sacred 
in marriage, and man could cast you off at his pleasure. 
But now the Church will not allow you to be cast off, 
except for reasons of utmost importance. In return for 
this supreme protection never before extended to woman, 
it asks of you only self-sacrifice. 

Young Ladies (variously). How beautiful! How 
noble ! So sweet ! 

AcRiNus. Young gentlemen, the weak should sacri- 
fice themselves gladly, but the strong have services of a 
more positive nature. I would speak of what befits your 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 99 

manhood. The woman having no importance of her own 
naturally seeks to illustrate the importance of her father 
or husband by outward adornment. If you array your- 
selves in the fineries and fopperies of woman, there- 
fore, you imitate one who is in subjection. It is well 
that woman should illustrate the strength of man, but it 
is not well that man should imitate the weakness of 
woman. 

{The young ladies receive this edification coldly and 
look at each other with sly expressions of disapproval) , 

Marthe. What a pity! Men's clothes are so nice. 

LiANE {who during this speech has suddenly become 
very interested, and has assumed the position of one 
trying to think out an idea which has suddenly seized 
her) . A beautiful edification ! The less men dress the 
better ! 

Heloise. I, too, agree with the Reverend Father. 
But for a wholly different reason. When a man dresses 
as much as a woman, there is a suspicion that he can- 
not fight or do a man's work. That he is more interested 
in displaying his importance than in getting it in the 
first place. 

AcRiNus {edgy in being differed from and exhibiting 
the priest's jealousy of the abbess). Why is the Rev- 
erend Mother so manifestly interested in her own 
charming attire.'' She works, does she not.'' And at a 
man's task.f* 

Heloise {taking his personal tone). I will answer 
that question. Your Reverence, when you tell me why 
you dress so well? 

AcRiNus. To illustrate the dignity and richness of 
my service. 

Heloise. And I have the additional reason, as your 
Reverence has said, of having no importance in my own 
sex. Though discharging a man's task. 

AcRiNus {more annoyed). No woman should dis- 
charge a man's task. It is against nature. 



100 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Heloise. Your Reverence quotes nature. In nature 
it is the male that dresses, not the female. And why.'* 
To attract the attention of the humble female. He does 
not choose her, she chooses him. Thus, by his argu- 
ment, the Reverend Father vrould seem to say that the 
male in nature illustrates his own weakness by his su- 
perior finery. The weakness of having to be chosen 
rather than to choose. 

AcRiNus (^decidedly raspy). The male is the stronger 
because he is able to dress that way. The female cer- 
tainly would if she could. The Reverend Mother's ar- 
gument is obviously fallacious. Let us hope that the im- 
piety of which it also savors is quite unsuspected on her 
part. 

LiANE. Well, the point in both cases is the same. 
Men ought not to be so dressy. Women should assist 
the Church in discouraging it as much as possible. 

Garthelaud {to Acrinus). Ask her now. What she 
is down here for. 

Acrinus. But the Reverend Mother has not perhaps 
come here to bandy words with the Bishop of Orleans ? 

Heloise {puzzled and at once apprehensive). I 
came down to see my sister. And 

Acrinus. To bear a message from the Baron. 

Heloise. Yes. {She goes to the gate and summons 
her two nuns. One of them gives her a document. She 
reads.) "To the Sieur Guillaume de la Garthelaud." 
{She hands it to him.) 

Garthelaud {handing it to Acrinus). Read it. 

Acrinus {handing it to her). You may read it to the 
Sieur. 

Heloise {with more apprehension). It is private. 
At least, there is nothing to the contrary. 

Acrinus. Its contents are public. 

Heloise {breaking the seal and reading). "The 
Sieur Guillaume de la Garthelaud having now been 
spouse and husband to Marthe de la Garthelaud for three 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise IQl 

years and having had by her no child, I hereby announce 
the marriage to be null and void and commission him 
to marry again. Such marriage to be as follows. Either 
he shall marry according to my designation some woman 
I shall give him with her land, that he may bring chil- 
dren to be heirs of said property; or said Marthe de la 
Garthelaud shall voluntarily relinquish her dowery and 
marriage to another of her own designation, and he 
shall marry her instead, retaining his present lordship 
of her lands and estates. She in this event to live upon 
her lands and estates according to her wish or to retire 
with all honor to a convent. If she refuse, I will, the 
present marriage being annulled, marry her to another 
man of my choosing, who shall be guardian of her land 
until she present him with an heir thereof. Given this 
day, the twelfth of August in the year of our Lord, 
1260, by me the Over lord of the Fief and Estates of 
said Marthe de la Garthelaud. 

Francois Courbise de Courbise — Baron." 

Marthe {staggering helplessly). Oh! {Liane has 
come to her during the reading. Heloise also nom puts 
an arm around her.) 

Heloise. You knew of this? 

AcRiNus. I was not unaware of his lordship's in- 
tention. 

Marthe {wildly). How can my marriage be null 
and void, father? Did you not marry us? According 
to the regulations of the Church? Can a man cast off 
his wife because she brings him no children? Father, I 
appeal to you ! 

AcRiNus. My daughter. Holy Church protects all 
marriages within her pale. 

Heloise. You seem to know the Baron's mind. 
What grounds has he? 

AcRiNus {to Garthelaud). On what grounds did you 
appeal to the Baron to annul this marriage? 

Garthelaud {surprised and indignant). I? 



102 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

AcRiNus {quickly and sternly^. You! 

Garthelaud {sulkily^. That it was no marriage. 
That she married within the degree of spiritual kin- 
ship. 

LlANE. HOW.^ 

Garthelaud. I was godfather to her third husband's 
child. 

Marthe. Father! I deny that I ever saw this man. 
Until the Baron selected him to be my husband. 

AcRiNus. Narrate the circumstg,nces. 

Garthelaud. We served in Tripolis together. I 
brought him home wounded to his wife. She was in 
childbirth^ and the alarm of the wounded master plunged 
her into greater danger. It was feared that she would 
die and with her the unborn child. They thought both 
could not live, and decided to save the child. 

LiANE {indignantly^. Oh! 

Acrinus. In such extremity so rules Holy Church. 

Garthelaud. The mother lay unconscious and was 
thought dead. The child threatened each instant to 
expire. Thus it was hastily baptized, and I, being there, 
stood for its godfather. But it was the child who died 
while yet its mother was unconscious, and the father 
also. Wheri later, the Baron gave to me the widow and 
her lands — such was my sensitiveness I didn't care to 
remind her of the painful first meeting. 

LiANE. And when did your conscience. Sir, finally 
become as sensitive as your heart? 

Garthelaud {sulkily divining her satire^. What are 
you driving at? 

LiANE. When did you at last discover that you, the 
godfather of a day-old infant, were living in grievous 
sin with its mother, who was unconscious during all the 
time you held your holy office? {Heloise seeks to hush 
her.) 

Garthelaud. I found out when I was told. 

Heloise. Who told you? 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 103 

AcRiNus {quickly^. That is beside the point. ThB 
sin is the same whether anyone told him or not. 

Heloise. Who told him? 

Garthelaud {sulhily to Acrinus). Why should I 
take all the blame? You told me. 

Heloise. The Bishop ! 

Acrinus. This discussion breeds mutiny in the 
Church. I protest that you^ Abbess_, are guilty of mis- 
conduct. 

Heloise. How did you know that he was within the 
degree ? 

Acrinus. I decline to answer. 

Marthe; (suddenly). You baptized the child! 

Heloise (shocked). And afterward married the god- 
father to the mother ! 

Acrinus. You incite against the laws of Holy 
Church. I tell you^ Abbess^ you are much condemned to 
make this schism and sedition. 

Heloise. You insisted that this matter be public. 
Did you know at the time that he was within the de- 
gree? 

Acrinus. You have no right to question me. 

Heloise. I have the right to question this man. 
Who knew that you had stood godfather? 

Acrinus. You need not answer. If I bid you keep 
silent. 

Garthelaud. Why should I keep silent? What is 
it after all? And what are you pushing it off on me for? 
The Baron knew it. 

Heloise. When you married her? 

Garthelaud. That was why he selected me. 

Heloise (mo\re shocked). Why he selected you? 

Garthelaud. In case she had no children. And I 
shouldn't be killed in the wars like her other husbands. 
So that the marriage might be annulled, and he might 
marry her again. 

Marthe. Marry me over and over again until I give 



104 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

him children ! For fighting men ! I have no rights what- 
ever. 

Heloise (seeking to quiet her). The land must pro- 
duce fighting men. What would become of the land if 
there were no fighting men? (To him.) And if there 
were no children? 

Garthelaud. I was to go elsewhere. We Garthe- 
lauds are famous for our children. 

Heloise. But if he knew you were disqualified and 
selected you for that reason^ someone must have told 
him. You ? 

Garthelaud. How did I know I was disqualified! 
(With injured innocence). Do you think I would have 
been degraded enough to marry her illegally? 

AcRiNus (hotly). Degraded! How dare you con- 
demn the opinions of your betters? You'd have jumped 
at any property the Baron offered. 

Garthelaud. Oh, I would, would I? Then I will 
hold my tongue no longer. 

AcRiNus. I command you in the name of Holy 
Church! 

Garthelaud (hesitating). Can he command me to 
be silent? 

Heloise. Only when someone lesser is speaking to 
you. I command you to speak, in the name of Holy 
Church. 

Garthelaud (vindictively). He told the Baron. 

Heloise. The Bishop? When? 

Garthelaud. At the time. That's why the Baron 
picked me out to marry her. 

AcRiNus (to Heloise). You have created a public 
scandal in the church. Who are these ignorant people 
to understand the workings of minds higher than their 
own? As for me, I have a clear and quiet conscience. 
It was I indeed who told the Baron that this man 
could not marry her lawfully. Yet see how the shame 
wherewith you sought to confound me recoils upon your 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 10,3 

own head. He was about to marry her to an Albigensian 
heretic. And for the same reason — that the Church 
might annul the union if it bore no fruit. Would you 
have approved this marriage, Abbess? 

Heloise (with honesty). No. 

AcRiNus; When I threatened him with Holy Church, 
he laughed aloud. "What care I for your priestly mum- 
meries, I must man my lands. She or the land, I care 
not which, must yield me fighting men." Seeing she 
must marry without the pale of the Church, would I 
or no, I thought a good Christian better than a heretic 
Especially as none knew that he had been her child's 
godfather. Do you challenge my decision. Reverend 
Abbess } 

Heloise. I crave pardon. Reverend Bishop. It was 
forced upon you by hard necessity. 

Garthelaud. But why try to put it off on me} As 
if I asked to have my marriage annulled? Leap from 
the frying pan into the fire! What do I know of this 
property I am to marry? I mightn't like the hunting. 

Marthe. Property ! We women are only transmit- 
ters of property ! I may live in mortal sin so long as I 
transmit my property. And unless I do so, I am to be 
cast away. Any man, any man I must submit to, so 
long as he is father of my child. What do I know about 
him? Nothing, it does not matter. Bring us a child by 
him. The first man that was allotted to me squandered 
my land. It did not matter, he might be father of my 
child. The second and third were filthy swine, it did not 
matter, they might be father of fighting men. Thank 
God for these fine wars of theirs that killed them off 
before they beggared me or made my life a hell. And 
then my last husband ! My only peace is when he is off 
fighting. He locks me in my tower, starves me, beats 
me 

Garthelaud. Well, I like that! You're my wife, 
aren't you? Did I ever beat you unlawfully? Did I 



106 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

ever break a bone or put out an eye? If the law didn't 
allow husbands to beat wives in reason, a pretty life we 
should lead with you. 

Marthe {hysterically^. Transmitters of property! 

Heloise {soothing her). My dear, my dear! Prop- 
erty must be transmitted. Otherwise the state is in 
chaos. It is no good to quarrel with the inevitable or- 
der of things. The question is what are you going 
to do about it.^ Your marriage stands annulled. Since 
you married without its pale, the Church cannot in- 
tervene to protect you. Are you willing to marry again 
a man of the Baron's choosing? 

Marthe {wildly). No, I have had enough of mar- 
riage. 

Heloise. To resign your dower, then, to an inmate 
of your household? 

Marthe {more wildly). Why must I give up my 
land ? My home ? My all ? 

Heloise. You cannot help yourself. It is not legal, 
but if you refuse to marry, the king will bear the Baron 
out. It is not legal, but you could not look to the 
Church for support. You must at any rate give up your 
present husband. 

Marthe. What do I care for him! Let him go to 
his hump-backed widow. I want to be let alone. 

Heloise. You cannot be let alone if you keep your 
land. If you want to be let alone, why not delegate 
your dower to a woman of your household! 

Marthe {vindictively). What woman I choose? 

Garthelaud. Does it say that? 

Heloise {handing him the document contemptuously) . 
Read. 

Garthelaud. I am a fighting man. Not a woman 
or a priest. Do you want me to unsex myself? {To 
Acrinus.) Does it say that? 

AcRiNus. She may designate the woman. 

Marthe. Let me think^ let me think! {The young 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 107 

ladies surge forward eagerly, all save Emelie.^ You 
drive me mad among you. What chance has a woman 
with your church and king against her? A woman of 
gentle soul who asks but to be let alone. (To Garthe- 
laud.) If I could find some woman who would make 
your life a hell! (Suddenly.) Emelie! I choose you 
to be this man's wife. 

Emelie. Me! (The young ladies look at her with 
indignation and contempt.) 

Nurse. Such luck! 

Garthelaud (laughing). What hair the minx 
has! 

AcRiNus (quickly). Emelie is rebellious and f reward. 
She will mismanage your estates. 

Marthe. She will make his life a hell. I choose 
Emelie. 

Emelie. Thank you for nothing. I refuse to marry 
your lout of a husband. 

Nurse. Are you mad? 

(The young ladies, Garthelaud, the Bishop, each 
show amazement accompanied by other emotions. He- 
loise and Liane are delighted at the decision). 

Marthe (indignantly). Are you too good to be 
beaten ? 

Emelie. Not because he beats you. 

Nurse. Why shouldn't a man? 

Emelie. I should not mind being beaten. But the 
man who beats me must be a master not a puppet. A 
man who goes where he will to marry, not where he is 
sent. (The young ladies are aghast but are nevertheless 
delighted that Emelie is out of the running.) But I've 
seen enough today of your gentlemens' marriages. If 
I marry, I shall marry because I want to and not to 
transmit properly. And since no gentleman marries 
for any other reason and it would not suit me to marry 
a peasant, I shall not marry at all. I refuse your gra- 
cious offer^ madame. 



108 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Marthe. What was good enough for me, an heiress, 
is not good enough for a pauper! 

Garthelaud. Did anybody ever hear the like ! 

AcRiNus. A woman rebelling at the position God has 
called her to! What would become of the structure of 
society ! 

Emelie. You, Madame de la Garthelaud, who choose 
me to make her husband's life a hell; you, Sieur de la 
Garthelaud, who go from woman to woman at the bid- 
ding of your master like a prize horse; you Bishop of 
Holy Church and God knows what, who find your silly 
sins deadly when it pleases you to find them so ! You 
may all of you go to the devil. I shall not sacrifice 
myself to the structure of your society unless I see 
something coming out of the sacrifice for me. 

AcRiNus (sharply). Abbess, this is your doing al- 
though you may have meant it not. Speak to this poor 
lost child. 

Heloise (firmly). I approve her decision. 

AcRiNus (aghast, to Liane). Tell her what she 
foregoes if she refuses to marry. 

Liane. You forego four walls in which you are a 
prisoner to be treated as your jailer pleases. You fore- 
go a girdle, which is already unfashionable. You forego 
a name, which you may buy when you please if you 
have ideas. 

AcRiNus (much shocked). I leave you all. (To 
Marthe.) I am sorry for you, but no wonder with such 
impious sisters God sent you no children. He wisely 
means the race to die out. (He goes.) 

Blanche (running and throwing herself before 
Marthe). Oh Madame! Marry him to me! And save 
me from something worse. 

Garthelaud. What do you mean, something worse? 
A proper spirit for a woman to marry in! I refuse to 
take her. 

Marthe. You will take anybody I pick out. But I 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 109 

shall not marry you to any such spiritless creature. 

Blanche (going to Heloise). Madame Abbess, I 
give myself to you. 

Heloise {gently hut definitively^. I am sorry but I 
have already a long waiting list. 

Blanche. Madame Sans-Ceintre, take me to Paris 
with you. 

LiANE. Child, you would be lost in Paris — ^you have 
no ideas. 

Blanche (wildly). And I must marry — — 

Marthe (^quickly and sternly). You must marry the 
man your father has selected. 

Blanche (going). My heart is broken. (She goes 
out Center.) 

Marthe (enumerating). Rosalie, Berenice, Annette, 
Jeanne. Not one of the simpering creatures could make 
your life a hell. 

Young Ladies (variously). Oh, Madame, we would 
try! 

Marthe. Not one but would make my life a hell if 
I stayed here. 

Garthelaud (coolly). It is not purgatory which in- 
terests the Baron but posterity. Come, I am willing 
to do my duty as a man. One wife is the same as an- 
other to me. 

Marthe (despairingly). Must I choose? Must it 
always be self-sacrifice for a woman? Must I choose 
between a home in which I am no longer mistress or a 
convent where I have no home at all? 

Garthelaud. You are better off than I am. I have 
no choice. 

Marthe (going on). Have I no rights? Must I 
choose ? 

Heloise (suddenly). No! You can circumvent the 
Baron. 

Marthe and Liane. How? 

Heloise. Make your home a convent. Give your 



110 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

lands and tenants to the Church and remain mistress of 
all. The Baron will be powerless to touch you. 

Marthe. I can? 

LiAXE (laughing heartily^. Did I not say a clever 
woman accepts things as they are and has her own 
way^ too.^ 

Marthe (to Garthelaud). I hereby give myself and 
my estates and all upon them to Holy Church and claim 
her protection. I regret that when I am abbess I 
cannot in some way make your life a hell. But let us 
hope the hump-backed widow can. Meanwhile^ sir, you 
are no longer my husband. Good afternoon ! 

Garthelaud (speechless with anger, to the young 
gentleman). Come! (At the gate.) Now that she has 
become a nun, Madame Abbess, I suppose she will have 
more children than is convenient. (He goes and with 
him the young men.) 

Marthe. Young ladies, this place has become a nun- 
nery. Do you wish to remain here.'' 

YouxG Ladies. Oh no, Madame. 

Marthe. Then return to your fathers at once. At 
once, do you hear.^ (The young ladies exist hastily.) 

Heloise. Emelie, I want such girls as you. 

Emelie (angrily). Why do you make a jest of me? 

Heloise. It is no jest. With liberty of self-devel- 
opment you may go far. 

Emelie. As far as abbess? 

Heloise. The election of abbess falls to the ablest 
of the nuns, but rarely to one who has no property. 

Emelie. You had no property. Why then? 

Heloise. Why do you ask, my child? 

Emelie. To make up my mind. 

Heloise (slowly). I had the influence of the Count. 

Emelie. Why, if you had no property? 

Marthe. You are impertinent. 

Heloise. No. I got it because — of my sister Liane. 

Emelie. How did she get it? 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 111 

Heloise. She is — {She pauses.) 

LiANE. His mistress. 

Emelie. Then I also will be somebody's mistress. 

Marthe. Emelie! Sooner abbess of my nunnery 
than that! 

Emelie. Stuff ! Everybody has a lover and nobody 
cares. What then is the difference between Madame 
and you? Only that her lover supports her. It is 
property that makes you object to her kind of mistress. 
She sells in a good market what you buy in a poor one, 
and naturally it annoys. But why pretend it is some- 
thing else? The pot is imprudent to abuse the kettle. 
Suppose some day she objects to your kind of mistress? 
Because by giving away what she is forced to sell, you 
destroy her market. 

LiANE. My god! 

Emelie. Then it will be war to the death between 
you — because of property. In the end you will win 
out because your children have the name. But, to save 
your face, you will have to give up your lovers and 
pretend you never thought of such a thing. 

Heloise. She is inspired! 

Emelie. Meanwhile, I have no property and I must 
therefore go somewhere. Because Madame is mistress, 
Madame is abbess. Very well then, I will go at once 
to headquarters. 

Marthe. But — but surely it must be wrong to make 
love a commercial matter ! That is why marriage and 
love cannot exist together. 

Emelie. Everything is a commercial matter. Why 
shouldn't love be like everything else? The trouble 
with your marriage is that there is no love to begin 
with. It's a good thing for women that love can be a 
commercial matter or women like me would have no 
means of support. But it's a good thing for men also. 

Heloise (much struck with her reasoning). How do 
you reason it? 



112 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

Emelie. If there is ever love in marriage^ who has 
it? The man or the woman? The woman. That is 
because the man is living off her property. People 
learn to like what they have to pay for. If men support 
the women in marriage, perhaps they may love them 
too some day. "Where the treasure is the heart is 
also/' they say in church. What do they say it for? 
They say it to make you want to go to heaven. 

Heloise (shocked). It is bad taste to quote the 
Scriptures when you are talking logic. The Scriptures 
are not logical but inspirational. 

Emelie (gasping), I'm stifling in this thing! I shall 
take it off! 

Marthe (tearfully). Take it off? 

LiANE (vigorously). Then no man will want you 
at all. 

Emelie. Surely I'm more attractive without it. 

LiANE. My God, don't I know it? Don't ask me 
why a man who wants us attractive, wants us also to 
look like a piece of macaroni! The sensible woman 
does what men desire, and they desire us fragile. God 
knows why they are such fools. 

Heloise. Women have been made weak so that men 
might appear strong. They must seem incapable of 
useful effort. Especially when supporting the men. 

Emelie (gasping with physical pain, all the more as 
she is beginning to expand with an idea^. But, but — 
aren't your gentlemen like our peasants? Don't they 
want to see we have breasts and hips? 

LiANE. Yes. But chiefly they want to see we can't 
stand up alone. The appeal to their egotism is greater 
than the appeal to their appetite. 

Emelie (suddenly blurting out). But can't they have 
both? 

LiANE. Ah, both ! But both are impossible. 

Emelie. Air! Air! (Liane and Heloise run to her, 
and in their arms she sinks to the ground.) 



Act III The Craft of the Tortoise 113 

Nurse (coming in with Emelie's nem long green 
shoes). God never meant such things! {She sees 
Emelie and runs to her.) My lamb ! Idiot^ I told you 
I mustn't strap them as tight as I could ! My lamb ! 
{She hauls arvay the stays, which Liane has been loosen- 
ing as the women surround Emelie, and holds them up.) 
Bah! (Holding up the shoes.) Bah! How can she 
ever walk in them ! And with that steeple on ! 

Marthe (feebly). She must walk in two sections. 

Emelie (getting to her feet, and in a firm weak 
voice) . Give me that thing ! And those shoes ! 

Nurse. How can she ever walk in them, I say ! 

Marthe (terrified at her bluster). In two sections. 

Emelie (suddenly grasping her idea). Two sections! 
(Taking a long gulp of air.) The gentleman demands 
that the lady be weak, the waist small? 

Liane (electrified, seeing that she is getting at an 
idea). Yes, yes. 

Emelie. Then we must be and not be at the same 
time ! 

Liane and Heloise. But how? 

Emelie. The larger you are at both ends the smaller 
you are in the middle. (She runs and gets her wimple 
from behind the ledge, thrusts an end into the Nurse's 
hands.) Hold it! (Holding the other end upon her 
waist, she whirls herself up in it, binding it tightly like 
a bandage.) There! 

Liane (disappointed). But that is nothing. 

Emily. That is only one section. The other, how 
shall I show you? (Pointing to the trees.) Why should 
we be like that? Why not like that? 

Liane (grasping the idea). My God! 

Emelie. I see it, I see it! How shall I show you? 
Oh ! (She runs to the parrot cage, unbuttons the wicker 
top from its floor, leaving the parrot sitting within on 
his cross-piece. She carries the wicker cage to the center 
and pops it over her head. The hole fits around her 



114 The Craft of the Tortoise Act III 

hips. Snatching off her purple veil, she drapes it on the 
wicker frame.) Behold! (Liane and Marthe and 
Heloise snatch off their wimples and drape them also, 
and the nurse claps on her hood. Emelie stands in the 
midst triumphant, both her arms stretched out.) 

Marthe {tearfully). But you can't sit down in it. 

Liane {triumphantly). They will know we can't 
work then. 

Heloise {with a touch of solemnity). She has done 
what women have done with the convent. What women 
have always done. Made the best of what they couldn't 
help. 

Liane {in ecstasy). And it will waste more goods! 
My God^ it is the idea of ideas ! 

CURTAIN 



ACT IV 
The Half and Half Business 

New Y&rJc. The drawing room of Emmeline's apart- 
ment. The first floor of a converted residence on one of 
the lower numbered streets off Fifth Avenue. Here 
several commodious rooms arranged as a house-keeping 
suite may still he had for a moderate rental, if one fore- 
goes a few conveniences and trimmings of the modern 
apartment house. The furnishings of this high-ceil- 
inged wainscoted room, cheerful in spite of its white 
marble mantel and grate and its old-time aristocratic 
stolidity, are noticeably simple but have an elegance 
which accords with its still unmodified architecture. 
One sees that the present tenant has fastidious taste and 
practical intelligence, and is accustomed to manage a 
moderate income in a way to derive the most of esthetic 
enjoyment from it. Only the profusion of flowers, 
scattered in vases everywhere, betokens extravagance. 
One wonders, perhaps, how a person who could spend 
patient years in assembling five pieces of such harmoni- 
ous furniture, can endure so indiscriminate and crowded 
a horticultural exhibit; and hopes it may be but the 
spoils of some recent festival. 

An electric bell is heard. It rings again before the 
door at the opposite end of the room opens in response. 
A young man in overalls enters. His good-looking face 
has an expression of almost childlike sweetness and 
simplicity of nature with indications of a childlike petu- 
lance and stubbornness. A woman would recognize at 

115 



116 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

once that he is eminently a man who repays manage- 
ment. He brushes off his overalls impatiently and shows 
reluctance to attend the door, but in a moment as the 
bell rings again decides to do so. He opens with some 
embarrassment to a modish and attractive young woman. 
She carries gorgeous furs from which hang many bushy 
tails and legs with claws, and even mounted heads. She 
is handsome and hard-lipped, and wears with complete 
sophistication a gay mercenary manner. She regards 
him with surprise, especially as his embarrassment 
increases. 

Mrs. Boyer. Oh ! Please tell Miss Archer that Mrs. 
Boyer is here. 

Gareth (awkwardly but with a geniality which he 
brings to his rescue^. They're out. I was here work- 
ing, and so the girl asked me — 

Mrs. Boyer. Didn't Miss Archer leave word? 

Gareth. Maybe with the girl. But — 

Mrs. Boyer (coming in). She expects me. I'll wait. 

Gareth (after a dubious moment). All right. (He 
goes to inner door but pauses there with indecision.) 

Mrs. Boyer (divining the cause of his hesitation and 
STniling at him brightly) . Well? 

Gareth. I — the girl is out, and — 

Mrs. Boyer. I won't steal anything. 

Gareth (again helping out his embarrassment with a 
winning grin). If the place was mine, I'd take a 
chance. 

Mrs. Boyer (amused and interested). The maid took 
a chance on you. 

Gareth. But she knows me. 

Mrs. Boyer (willing to prolong the conversation). 
You've worked here before, I suppose? Or do you 
mean she knows you personally? 

Gareth (quickly, his tone indicating some resentment 
to the situation). No, I — I've worked here before. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 117 

Mrs. Boyer. At any rate, you have the table silver. 
Nothing to steal here but flowers. And I'd need a cart 
for them. {She pauses before a large ornamented pot 
of trellised roses standing in front of the grate, tied with 
a very expensive and unbecoming sash ribbon.) 

Gareth. Pretty swell, aren't they? 

Mrs. Boyer. Beautiful. A bit impressive, for the 
room. 

Gareth (disappointed). You don't like it? 

Mrs. Boyer. Yes. At the proper distance. 

Gareth (cheerfully). Makes the others look like 
thirty cents, don't it? 

Mrs. Boyer (coming to table and uncovering a five- 
pound box of candy, taking a piece). Here's something 
to steal. 

Gareth (his tone showing some waspishness). Help 
yourself! If you smoke, here's a box of one hundred 
cigarettes ! Something classy. Everyone of them 
marked. Metropolitan Club. 

Mrs. Boyer (coolly but inoffensively). You seem to 
have worked here pretty often. 

Gareth. Look here. She's not hiring me. Miss 
Archer's a friend of mine, and now and then I do things 
for her. 

Mrs. Boyer (flashing a radiant smile). Of course I 
saw at once you weren't just a workman, Mr. ? 

Gareth (much pleased). Garrity. (Quickly.) 
Gareth Garrity. 

Mrs. Boyer. Gareth? What an odd pretty name. 

Gareth (half proudly, half apologetically). My 
mother got it out of some poetry. Count Tennyson*s. 

Mrs. Boyer. Yes. What sort of work are you 
doing ? 

Gareth. Arranging the electric lights in the dining 
room. She wants things to look fine tomorrow night. A 
special dinner. 

Mrs. Boyer (nodding). I'm coming. 



118 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Gareth. What sort of books do you write? 

Mrs. Boyer. I? 

Gareth. Nobody's invited but authors. 

Mrs. Boyer (cattily). I see. Well, she's made one 
exception in my case. I sometimes publish literature 
but I'm rather careful not to write it. 

Gareth. Yet I've run across your name somewhere. 
Picture too. 

Mrs. Boyer (smiling engagingly). Guess. Mrs. 
Boyer. Hilda Boyer. 

Gareth. The breach of promise case with the 
octopus ! 

Mrs. Boyer. Octogenarian. I see you read the 
Daily Sphere. 

Gareth (gallantly, his tone becoming more intimate). 
An old man with his money ought to pay. What else 
would be in it — (He hesitates and grins delightfully.) 
For a peach like you. ' 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing). So I think. 

Gareth (regretfully). Well, you'll excuse me? Em- 
meline — Miss Archer made me swear on a stack of 
bibles I'd be through before four o'clock. 

Mrs. Boyer (significantly). Yes, I was due then. 
Our committee meeting. We had to swear on a stack of 
bibles to be through at five. Careful about her dates. 

Gareth (quickly). She has to be, a busy woman 
like her. I don't see how she finds time to write so 
many books. Great, aren't they? 

Mrs. Boyer (with alluring candor). Mr. Garrity, 
how splendid it must be to have a loyal and admiring 
friend like you! And how nice of you to help her out 
in so many ways ! A self-supporting woman needs a 
man to depend upon. 

Gareth. What can I do for her? Not a marker to 
what she does for me. 

Mrs. Boyer (confidentially). What does she do for 
you? 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 119 

Gareth. Lets me know her, isn't that enough? 
She — (Checking his enthusiasm.) I guess I must go 
to work. (He goes abruptly.) 

{Mrs. Boyer looJcs after him with some amusement 
and envy. She goes at once to the pot of roses, and 
takes up the envelope which is attached to them. Glanc- 
ing at the door, she takes out the card quickly.) 

Mrs. Boyer. "Queen Rose of the Rosebud Garden 
of Girls — Gareth." Reading Tennyson with him — to 
educate him I suppose. {She goes and takes another 
piece of candy, and calls gaily.) Mr. Gareth — I mean 
Mr. Garrity_, I'm stealing again. Don't you want to 
come watch me? {He comes to the door; she hands him 
a piece.) 

Gareth {more emphatically than the case seems to 
demand). No_, thank you. 

Mrsi. Boyer. Please be a thief with me. 

Gareth. Never eat it. 

Mrs. Boyer. That's just like a man. A real man^ 
I mean. 

Gareth. What? 

Mrs. Boyer. You're too proud. Because some other 
man gave it to Emmeline. Fine but foolish. Besides, 
don't you see that turn-about is fair play? 

Gareth. What do you mean? 

Mrs. Boyer. Those lights for Emmeline's dinner. 
They would have cost — let me see — fifteen dollars? 

Gareth. Twenty-five anywhere, not counting my 
idea. Got the stuiF wholesale, too. 

Mrs. Boyer. Lucky Emmeline ! Well, he'll be there, 
author or no author. Why shouldn't you enjoy his 
candy then? Especially when I beg you to. Now can 
you refuse? 

Gareth {grinning at her). Yes. 

Mrs. Boyer. That's really morbid of you. 
Please ! 

Gareth {relenting). No. {He laughs as she puts 



120 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

a chocolate into his mouth.) What do you mean, author 
or no author? 

Mrs. Boyer. You don't think Emmeline is wasting a 
special dinner on authors^ do you? Unless they're very 
successful ones. People one invites to special dinners 
give dinners or something else in return. Else they're 
not worth wasting time on. 

Gareth {hotly). She wastes time on me. What can 
I give her? 

Mrs. Boyer. Jobs every now and then that she 
wants done. And a lot of other services, I guess, if the 
truth were known. {Soothing him down.) Besides, 
you're the sort of man no woman would call a waste of 
time. 

Gareth {pleased but suspicious). Why? 

Mrs. Boyer {alluringly). How stupid men are! 

Gareth. Say, will you do something for me? 

Mrs. Boyer {gaily). Yes. 

Gareth. Tell me which you like best. {He brings 
out a packet of half a dozen neckties, folded without 
being wrapped, all solid colors and very sober. He 
throws them over his arm.) 

Mrs. Boyer. For you? I should have thought you'd 
like a pattern or a stripe. 

Gareth {with suspicious emphasis). Not on your 
life! They're loud or sissy. 

Mrs. Boyer. But perhaps my taste wouldn't agree 
— with Emmeline's. 

Gareth {bashfully but pleased). Oh go on. 

Mrs. Boyer. I like this dark one. {Holding it up 
under his chin.) Yes, it's quiet and manly. Just suits 
you. Bright colors cheapen a manly man. 

Gareth {a little flustered at her flattery and her 
nearness). Just what she says. {The bell rings, he 
stuffs the ties in his pocket.) 

Mrs. Boyer. There's Emmeline. 

Gareth, She has her key. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 121 

Mrs. Boyer {seeing his hesitation). Shall I go? 

Gareth. That's all right. (He opens the door as 
she follows.) 

Edmund (at door, in a tone of surprise). Miss Ar- 
cher at home.^ 

Gareth. No, Miss 

Mrs. Boyer (interrupting). Mr. Atkinson! How 
do you do.'* 

(Edmund enters. He is an alert trim young man 
tvith perpetually sparkling eyes. He rvears an Oxford 
cutaway and dark gray trousers, giving the effect of a 
subdued dandy. He takes her proffered hand.) 

Mrs. Boyer (after a perceptible second of hesita- 
tion). Mr. Garrity-j Mr. Atkinson. 

Edmuxd (shaking hands with Gareth, who has nodded 
stiffly). How do you? V^Tiich one's answering the bell 
today ? 

Mrs. Boyer. Both. Emmeline — (The telephone 
bell rings.) Maybe that's she now. (She moves toward 
the phone.) 

Gareth (who has the start of her). I'll answer it. 
(Explaining awkwardly as he takes the receiver.) You 
see^ she expects only the girl or me to be here. Hello. 
Yes it's me. Annie had to go out. I know, but I 
couldn't get through in time. Now, Em — Miss Archer 
— what could I do? (Awkwardly but with relief at 
having discovered some way to say he is not alone.) 
She's right here, want to speak to her? Yes, I'll tell 
her. Goodbye. (He hangs up the receiver. In speak- 
ing, his voice had at once assumed a caressing quality 
but also the tone of one habitually conciliatory. Both 
Mrs. Boyer and Atkinson have noticed this at once, and 
both show great interest. Especially Atkinson, who has 
taken a step forward. Gareth goes on to Mrs. Boyer.) 
Miss Archer says to tell you she's awfully sorry but she 
didn't have a moment. She phoned to say she had been 
unavoidably detained and would be here at four-thirty. 



122 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Would you please wait? Or if you could use the half 
hour in this part of town^ couldn't you go out and come 
back? 

Mrs. Boyer {laughingly, comprehending that Emme- 
line wants her to go). I'll wait. 

Gareth. Then excuse me. (He goes.) 

Edmund (eagerly). Who is he? 

Mrs. Boyer. Apparently, a friend of Miss Archer's. 
Doing some work for her. 

Edmund. I was coming to see you later. 

Mrs. Boyer. What is your esteemed proprietor's 
proposition ? 

Edmund (hesitating). I'm to sound you tactfully to 
see whether — you would consent to publishing some of 
the letters you'll use as evidence in your case. 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing). Indeed? How much is he 
offering? 

Edmund. He wants to make a campaign of it. If 
he can get five letters worth the money, he'll publish 
one a day. 

Mrs. Boyer. How much money? 

Edmund. Two thousand. See here, don't blame me. 
It's rotten. 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing). Business is business. Tell 
him I'll split the difference. And this is my last offer. 
Twenty-five hundred. 

Edmund. The proposition came from you? (Laugh- 
ing curtly.) I see I've done him an injustice. Both 
morally and commercially. 

Mrs. Boyer. Don't be silly. Is a man to take a 
year of a woman's youth, good looks, and freshness — 
all perishable products — and get out of it for 
nothing? 

Edmund. That's for the jury to say. 

Mrs. Boyer. Suppose it's made up of twelve sex- 
protecting men like yourself? Then I've thrown good 
money after bad. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 123 

Edmund. And for a paltry twenty-five hundred 
you'll accept the condemnation of most — 

Mrs. Boyer. Most men. Who fear their own letters 
might come home to roost. 

Edmund. And women, too. 

Mrs. Boyer. Some of them will say so to yon. For 
their own reasons. But in their hearts they will agree 
with the majority of women. That you men play so 
rotten a game that we have a right to get out of it what 
we can. Precious little I can tell you. 

Edmund. Then you're going to make men fight shy 
of you all your life. For a paltry twenty-five hundred? 

Mrs. Boyer. Not at all, Don Quixote. If that cam- 
paign is handled right — and I propose to see that it is 
— by the time the third letter is printed, he will offer 
to settle out of court. 

Edmund (laughing curtly^. I've done you a com- 
mercial injustice. 

Mrs. Boyer {with equal good humor). Of course if 
you tell this to your esteemed chief, don't neglect to 
point out that the letters will be quite worth his while 
at that. 

Edmund. I'll tell him when I take your answer. 

Mrs. Boyer {going toward phone). I might as well 
do it here. 

Edmund {involuntarily). I'd rather you wouldn't. 

Mrs. Boyer {pretending not to see his meaning). 
You want me to go out.^ In case Emmeline should 
come in. 

Edmund. Well, yes. That's another reason. 

Mrs. Boyer. All right, I'll go. {At door.) Emme- 
line, I see, is rather careful about her dates, even if 
she does slip up once in a while. I ought to warn you 
that he had orders to quit at four, and our committee 
meeting at five. I don't know where you come in. 
{She goes.) 

Edmund {after a moment of appreciation of Mrs, 



124 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Boyer*a cattiness Edmund looks around at the flowers, 
picks out a modest vase which one supposes are his. 
Good-humoredly). Also ran. (Going to the pot of 
trellised roses.) Hm! The usual expensive horror! 
{Seeing the envelope, he takes it up, puts it down again; 
g&es and lifts the telephone, puts it down again, and 
goes to door of room and calls.) Mr. Garrity! {Gareth 
comes to door.) Got a minute .f* 

Gareth {curtly). No, but I'll take one. 

Edmund {holding out his case). Have a cigarette? 

Gareth {taking it after hesitating). Not Metropoli- 
tan Club! 

Edmund (puzzled, then comprehending with a laugh). 
Just a modest wage-earner like yourself. Light? (At 
a loss how to begin.) See here, Mr. Garrity, if I give 
you my confidence, will you give me yours? 

Gareth (on the defensive). What are you driving 
at? 

Edmund. I make fifty dollars a week and have my 
people to help along. I work on a newspaper and have 
a little money beside that. What do you do? 

Gareth. Not that it's any of your business, but I'm 
an electric inspector. I make four dollars a day and 
haven't anybody to look out for. Now say what you've 
got to say. 

Edmund. Are you in this floral exhibit, too? 

Gareth. That's none of your business either. But 
I am. 

Edmund (pointing to the trellised pot). My boy, 
we're competing with millionaires. (Gareth chuckles in 
spite of himself.) Yours? 

Gareth. Why not? 

Edmund. But — but they must have cost a week's 
salary. 

Gareth (proud of his management). Got 'em at a 
wholesale nursery before the Easter prices began, and 
left 'em at a Third Avenue florist I'd done some work 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 125 

for. Bought the basket wholesale. Ribbon cost most 
of all. Got a milliner I'd worked for to tie the bow. 
Looks like the Plaza_, don't it? Cost me just nine 
dollars and forty-two cents. Now what's all this 
about ? 

Edmund. I hardly know how to say. 

Gareth. Are you coming to her particular dinner 
tomorrow ? 

Edmund {hearing of it for the first time). No, are 
you.'' 

Gareth. I.^ Of course not! 

Edmund. It's the Metropolitan Club I guess. 

Gareth. What's the idea of telling me who you are 
and what you make? 

Edmund. Frankly, I wanted to know who you were. 

Gareth. Why ? 

Edmund. Why did you want to know if I was the 
Metropolitan Club? {Gareth shows anger.) I fancy 
we both know why and would rather not say. (He 
offers his hand, rvhich Gareth after a moment shakes 
heartily.) 

Gareth (diffidently hut with determination). Did 
you ever hear about me? 

Edmund. No. Did you ever hear about me? 

Gareth (fiercely). Why should I hear about any of 
you! But I guess there's not much stuff coming in 
here I don't see. Books, flowers, candy, cigarettes. And 
whenever I want to take her out to dinner, she's always 
going with somebody else. Taj;i at seven, theatre, sup- 
per at a dance place afterward, taxi back! And some 
of them have their own cars for an all Sunday spin in 
the country. Oh, she lets me hear that all right! And 
why shouldn't she ? I ask you why shouldn't she ? 

Edmund. Well, if it's any consolation, she lets me 
hear it too. 

Gareth (derisively). Oh you! 

Edmund. You're the one who buys everything from 



126 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Victrolas to knitting needles wholesale^ aren't you? 
Wellj I've heard about him. You needn't be afraid 
you're not in the running. The Metropolitan Club may 
give her a better time^ but you're also a very profitable 
friend. 

Gareth. What do you mean? I can't give her any- 
thing she wants. 

Edmund. How many of her presents did you engi- 
neer last Christmas? 

Gareth {pleased). Say, she makes a bushel of them, 
don't she? And not a man in the bunch. Did you ever 
figure out she was so stuck on her women friends? 

Edmund. My boy, when a woman is invited to din- 
ner she has to pay for it. Her mere presence at an- 
other woman's table isn't supposed to be a sufficient 
compensation. She expects a man to think that, but 
not another woman. {The telephone rings. Both men 
make a jump toward it, exclaiming "Emmeline." Then 
both hesitate.) I'm not supposed to be here. 

Gareth. Me neither. Promised her I'd be gone in 
five minutes. 

Edmund. I'll match you — to see who gets in Dutch. 
All right, pray for me. {Taking up receiver.) Hello. 
{To Gareth.) A man! {In phone.) No, she's not at 
home. Who am I ? Well, really, who are you ? The 
maid — has scalded her finger and that's the reason she 
couldn't come. Yes, I'm the doctor. Well, hold the 
wire and I'll see if Miss Archer left any message. {He 
puts his hand over the transmitter.) He says she 
phoned him to call her up most importantly just before 
four o'clock. That was Mrs. Boyer's and the com- 
mittee's date. Looks as if she wanted them to know 
about it. Perhaps it's the Metropolitan Club. Want 
to have a look at him? 

Gareth. Say, what do you mean? 

Edmund. Game for anything that happens? 

Gareth {deciding). Yes. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 127 

Edmund {in phone). Hello, the maid says Miss Ar- 
cher expects you to tea at a quarter to five. Not at all. 
(He hangs up, and both men begin to pace the floor in 
excitement.) 

Gareth. What's the idea? 

Edmund. I'm coming. At a quarter to five. 

Gareth {understanding) . Me too. 

Edmund {warningly). She'll try to scare you off. 

Gareth {suspiciously). Why me any more than you? 

Edmund. Me too. But it v^on't work with me. 

Gareth {angrily). Oh it won't? Well, I'm not so 
easy as you think. 

Edmund {extending his hand). Don't get riled. 
We've got to stand together. {Gareth immediately 
grins and shakes his hand cordially. The telephone 
rings. Both men jump apart exclaiming ""Emmeline.") 

Gareth. I'll match you. 

Edmund {grimly). Your turn. 

Gareth {in receiver, most mildly and conciliatingly) . 
Hello. {To Edmund.) A man! {In phone.) Yes 
this is 3065. I say this is 3065. No, she's not at home. 
The girl's scalded her hand. Yes, I'm the doctor. All 
right, hold the wire. {Putting his hand over the trans- 
mitter.) She phoned him to call her up about four- 
thirty, important. 

Edmund. Ask him! 

Gareth {in phone). Hello. She says Miss Archer 
expects you to tea at a quarter to five. Don't mention 
it. {He rises excitedly.) Quite a party! 

Edmund. Yes ! 

Gareth. What are you going to do? 

Edmund. See them ! 

Gareth. But she'll find out. 

Edmund {surprised). Naturally. I'll tell her. 

Gareth. You've got your nerve. This will put me 
in bad. 

Edmund. No worse than me. What of it? 



128 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Gareth. What of it? I thought of course you'd get 
us out in some way. 

Edmund. You said you were game. 

Gareth. Yes^ but — 

Edmund. See here. I don't know how long she's 
kept you dangling around. Or what you're dangling 
for. But I've been two years at it, and I don't propose 
to dangle any longer. She's got to decide pretty quick 
whether she'll marry me or not? 

Gareth. Marry you? 

Edmund. You don't expect her to marry you, do 
you? 

Gareth. That's none of your damn business ! 

Edmund {sympathetically but aware of the humor of 
his position). My boy, she's balancing me off with — 
with the Metropolitan Club and God knows how many 
limousines and country places. Where do you think 
you'd come in? 

Gareth (fiercely). How many times did you ever 
eat with her here alone? 

Edmund. Never. Stands me fifteen dollars when 
she dines with me. 

Gareth. So you never went to market and cooked 
dinner for her on the girl's day out, hey? I have lots 
of times. And I could tell you something else if I 
wanted to. Did she ever invent a name for you? Be- 
cause she wanted to call you a name all her own? 

Edmund (jealously). You don't mean to say she's 
got one for you, too. 

Gareth. That's my business. 

Edmund (more jealous yet still sympathetic). See 
here, my boy. Excuse me for saying so, but it's only 
decent. You're wasting your time. (Pointing to the 
pot of flowers.) Your money, and your — your heart. 
She'd never marry you in the world. Why, she couldn't. 
You better cut it. 

Gareth, (furiously). Who asked your sympathy? 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 129 

All for my own good, too ! You're a hell of a one to 
advise me to clear out. 

Edmund {angrily). Don't be a fool! 

Gareth. I'ni in charge of this house just now. Get 
out or I'll throw you out. 

Edmund {standing his ground). You will, will you? 
{The telephone rings. Both men jump apart, exclaim- 
ing ^'Emmeline.") My turn. {Into the receiver, rvith 
moderated exasperation.) Hello! {To Gareth.) A 
man! {Angrily.) Yes, this is 3065. What do you 
v/ant.'* She can't come. She's scalded her arm and I'm 
the doctor. {A pause.) Hold the wire. {Springs up, 
walks the floor excitedly.) 

Gareth. What is it.'' 

Edmund. What the devil do you think it is? 
{Clenches his fists as he walks up and down, then re- 
turns to receiver.) She says Miss Archer expects you 
to tea at five o'clock. Sharp! {Hangs up.) I suppose 
you'll throw us all out! 

Gareth {sinking into a chair and putting his head in 
his hands). The four of you! And every one of you 
in her set — with education, money — 

Edmund {comforting him). Lord, she could have 
taken a millionaire long ago if she wanted him. Money 
isn't what she wants. Money is stupid. She likes us 
because we are interesting. 

Gareth {looking up). There's a chance of her 
marrying us? 

Edmund. Well, she wants money enough. She 
won't marry me unless she has to. 

Gareth. What do you mean, has to? 

Edmund. To keep me. But she's got to make up 
her mind pretty quick. 

Gareth {uneasy hut contemptuous). Yes, when it 
came to a show-down you'd crawl. 

Edmund. Perhaps I would. But I'd bluff to the 
limit. 



130 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Gareth. Say^ what right did she ever give you to 
dictate terms to her like that? 

Edmund {wildly). Emmeline! She's said it to all 
of us ! 

Gareth {still very apparently quoting). All the 
same^ it's morbidly masculine. The airs of men make 
me sick. 

Edmund. My boy, that's their little game. Every 
woman tells every man that. He's morbid, unreason- 
able, selfish. When he isn't that, he's thick-skulled, 
coarse-grained, heavy-fisted ! They have all the intui- 
tion, all the finer feelings, all the delicate instincts there 
are. That's their little game I tell you. They've been 
inventing the rules of it for centuries. At last they've 
got us so we really think we're the clumsy ele- 
phants they say we are. {The door button rings. 
Both men cry ''Emmeline" and dart toward the tele- 
phone.) 

Gareth {whispering). It's the front door. 

Edmund. Our first guest. 

Gareth. Let's not hear it. 

Edmund {nervously). You go get ready. 

Gareth. I — well, all right. 

{He goes quickly. Edmund draws a long breath, 
flexes his muscles, opens the door. Mrs. Garton stands 
there. She possesses an unaggressive but pervasive air 
of feminine good form. An embodiment of the best 
standards of femininity, reared from the cradle to be, 
do, and desire the correct thing. What little individu- 
ality the thorough educational process has left her, oc- 
casionally appears in a wistful bewilderment when the 
instinct of self-preservation, not yet quite ironed out, 
vaguely protests at any danger it sniffs fram, without. 
She is richly but quietly gowned, and her black furs are 
heavy and elegant.) 

Martha. Oh ! 

Edmund {recovering). How do you do? 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 131 

Martha, Mrs. Garton. Our committee is meeting 
with Miss Archer. 

Edmund. Yes_, er — come in^ won't you? My name 
is Atkinson. 

Martha {puzzled to account for his presence). 
Thank you. (She enters.) You're not a newspaper 
man.'' 

Edmund. Sort of. 

Martha. But the papers were to know nothing of 
it. Until our plans were formulated. It is distressing 
enough anyhow that this is an age of advertising. If I 
had my way^ our work should be done only by one 
woman's heart speaking to another. 

Edmund. Pardon me, I'm not here on business. 

Martha. Oh! Still, now that you are here. After 
all, what can be done in our strident times without pub- 
licity? Miss Archer has doubtless told you? 

Edmund. I know only there's a committee meeting. 
From Mrs. Boyer. 

Martha. Yes, society women can always interest 
newspapers. That's why I chose her. It all came out 
of Miss Archer's last great book. The Dog in the 
Manger. The one where the Mayor who had done so 
much for labor and the poor had his public life defeated 
because of the revelation of certain — domestic irregu- 
larities. That book was the third turning point in my 
life. In a flash of lightning I saw suddenly that Miss 
Archer was right. That both women and the Church 
lack a sense of proportion. Of course I'm not in the 
least condoning his sin. But after all what were his 
domestic irregularities compared to his public services? 
Yet the condemnation of women and the pulpits ruined 
his life work. And after closing the book I said to 
myself quite involuntarily, "That is my life work." To 
change the public attitude of women toward the viola- 
tion of the marriage vow while keeping all their personal 
condemnation for it absolutely intact. I had no sooner 



132 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

seen that this was really my life work, than I saw it 
was only an extension of my previous life work. You 
perhaps know I am president of the Society to Maintain 
that Woman's Place is the Home. I saw at once that 
this new idea was really only the old one. To keep 
Home and State entirely separate. Though the instinc- 
tive sentiment of every woman is God-given and im- 
plicitly reliable, her logic is not always infallible. She 
must be made to see that her affairs are not the State's 
affairs, and that the State comes first. So I organized 
a committee to discuss propaganda. And asked 
the Woman's Suffrage society to send a representa- 
tive. 

Edmund. What! Woman's Suffrage! 

Martha. So I thought at first. But women must 
drop their minor differences and unite in a common 
purpose. Though suffragists make the fundamental 
error of mixing up Home and State, still the misguided 
creatures think they have the welfare of the State at 
heart. 

Edmund. But Emmeline — Miss Archer — goes even 
further. She is a femininist. 

Martha. I have never been able to find out what 
their platform is. I believe that having ruined the 
Home, they want to abolish it altogether. Yet even 
that is in the name of the wider interest of the State. 
So we three, differing so enormously, can yet all join 
hands in this crusade. And say what you will, women 
are a power. 

Edmund. Do you mind if I run away? I've an 
appointment at five. (Going to door, he calls.) Gar- 
rity ! Garrity ! That's funny. He must have slipped 
out the back way. 

Martha {sighing as she surveys the flowers). How 
many admirers Emmeline must have! 

Edmund. Frightful to think of all the money men 
spend on flowers for the same woman! 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 133 

Martha. Oh_, that's unreasonable^ isn't it? Almost 
morbid, don't you think? 

Edmund {cheerfully^. A man can never acquire the 
finer feelings a woman is born with, can he? By the 
way, I was to tell you that Miss Archer expects a 
gentleman to tea. At five. Good afternoon. {He goes.} 

Martha {beginning after a moment to rehearse a 
speech). Gentlemen of the Legislature. It is repug- 
nant to my feelings as a woman to stand before you in 
this public capacity. But I cannot shirk my duty; and 
it is my mission to come and tell you what you know so 
well already. The Home is part of the State but the 
State is not part of the Home. The whole can never be 
part of one of its parts. The Home is the unit of the 
State but politics must be kept out of it. {The phone 
rings. After a moment of uncertainty, she answers it.) 
Perhaps that's Emmeline. {In the phone.) Yes? No, 
this is not Emmeline. Oh yes, you are the gentleman 
she was expecting to come to tea at five. Not at all. 
{She hangs up the receiver.) 

Emmeline {opening the front door and speaking off). 
Thanks so much for the lift in the taxi. I warned you 
I shouldn't ask you in. It was a beautiful luncheon, 
you extravagant young man. Even if your necktie did 
quarrel with my hat. Drop in some afternoon for a 
cup of tea. I'll phone you. Goodbye. 

{She enters, A young woman of charm, distinction, 
and beauty, with masses of black hair. A broad stole 
of leopard skin drags from her shoulder in barbaric 
opulence, from the ends of which hang the legs of the 
animal with conspicuous highly polished claws; a large 
muff to match, hanging with the bushy tails of several 
other animals. Sane, humorous, poised, she impresses at 
once as a healthy and achieving person. She has an air 
of assurance born of a consciousness of her personal 
attractions and increased by subsequent successes other 
than social. Yet there is a suspicion of complacency 



134 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

which would tell against a less pleasing personality.) 
So ashamed! Really never late for anything. (Shak- 
ing hands.) Where is Mrs. Boyer.^ 

Martha. Not come yet. 

Emmeline. Oh! Who was here when you came? 

Martha. A Mr. Atkinson. 

Emmeline {concealing her surprise and disapproval) . 
No one else.^ Excuse me. {Looking in room Right, 
then calling.) Annie ! {Returning after a moment.) 
Mr. Atkinson is a brisk and delightful person_, isn't he? 
Came on business I suppose? No message? 

Martha. He left yours. 

Emmeline. Mine? 

Martha. That you were expecting a gentleman to 
tea at five. 

Emmeline {making a rapid calculation). Annie must 
have told him in that helpless way of hers when she 
had to go out. Yes, I couldn't help it. He is leaving 
town tomorrow. He gave me a lovely dinner at the 
Biltmore last night — appallingly expensive. So before 
he went, I simply had to give him a cup of tea. 

Martha. It's perfectly all right. What a nice 
place! Too bad these fine old downtown houses have 
to be cut up into apartments. 

Emmeline. The worst of it is there's no hall ser- 
vice and people can come up without phoning. You've 
no chance to be out. 

Martha. I wish our third member would come. 

Emmeline. I hope you understand, Martha, that 
you are in for the stiftest thing you ever tackled. Bad 
enough to make headway with most of the suffragists. 
But you with the antis? You understand what we are 
doing? That we mean to invade the field of woman's 
traditional morality and sentiment? 

Martha. I understand it quite completely. But it's 
only her public attitude. Her public attitude and hef 
private attitude should be kept quite separate. No one 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 135 

understands that so well as we who are opposed to 
mixing up State and Home. (With a tinge of warmth.) 
Why, then, should it be easier with the suffragists? 

Emmeline (picking her words carefully, and thus 
adding to the previous impression that she regards 
Martha as a child). Why because — because women who 
believe in their political independence generally believe 
in economic independence also. And woman's traditional 
morality and sentiment — about man's domestic irregu- 
larities — are largely the result of her dependence on 
man and hence competition for his support. Her own 
livelihood was threatened. 

Martha. Emmeline ! 

Emmeline. I don't mean, mind you, that's all there 
is to it now. 

Martha. There's no such thing as morality and 
virtue born in woman as a sex? Just because she is a 
woman ? 

Emmeline (conciliatingly). Perhaps not just that. 
But most virtues are in a broad sense economic. An 
act helps or harms. If one, it is good; if the other, 
bad. 

Martha. Virtues were virtues and vices vices be- 
fore the beginning of time. Before ever the earth was. 

Emmeline. Well, dear, need we go into that? I 
just wanted you to appreciate our campaign would be 
difficult. It's going to be hard to make women see that 
there are twelve commandments, and that one-twelfth is 
not greater than eleven twelfths. 

Martha. But it isn't only women. The pulpits did 
as much as the women to ruin the Mayor in your book. 

Emmeline. The Church is supported by women. 
Consequently it caters to them largely and falls into the 
same exaggerations. Besides, ministers come in the 
category of women anyway, in their traditional remote- 
ness from actual economic affairs and their traditional 
subservience to another's will. 



136 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Martha (breathlessly). Emmeline ! Do you mean 
to say I'm going to attack religion? 

Emmeline. Not at all^ dear. Just showing you how 
it comes that both Church and women lack a sense of 
proportion. 

Martha (almost tremulously). Tell me one thing, 
Emmeline. There's nothing in this cause, is there, 
which will endanger our position? Pardon me, dear, 
but I feel I must say it. Nothing which will work out 
as your Suffrage has. To lessen the innate chivalry of 
men to women. 

Emmeline. Chivalry? A beautiful gesture in the 
grand style. Only superficial manners, empty deference 
without real protection. Look at our Southern States 
if you wish to see in a word what is man's chivalry to 
woman? Where chivalry is the highest the age of con- 
sent is the lowest? (A pause.) So many things you 
could understand better if you were not a happily mar- 
ried woman. 

Martha. Oh! (Suddenly speaking out of a pent- 
up emotion.) I am not a happily married woman. 

Emmeline (distressed). Forgive me. 

Martha. I had no intention of saying it. I never 
told anyone before. But my husband is not only untrue 
to me. A — a mistress for years. 

Emmeline. Martha ! I am sorry. I — 

Martha. And she makes him spend a lot of money. 
Money I need for my children, for his home, and his 
position in society. Her furs are better than mine. 
Goes around in her ermine while I'm worn out with 
the struggle to keep up appearances. On half his 
income. 

Emmeline (gently). Why do you not divorce him? 

Martha. Break up the sanctity of our home? De- 
prive my little ones of their father? Send them into 
life publicly branded as the children of a divorced 
woman? No, a nice woman takes a man for better or 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 137 

for worse, but forever. She must submit in silence. 
Hold fast to all things^ suffer all things, endure all 
things. For the sake of society and her children. 

Emmeline. But don't you see that he has already 
broken up your home.^ 

Martpia. No one knows it. Even the children do 
not realize it themselves. Oh, what I have gone through 
trying to keep up appearances with them, with every- 
body ! As for money — my money this woman is plaster- 
ing herself with ! — the only way I can get any at all 
is by overcharging. 

Emmeline. By overcharging.'* 

Martha. An arrangement with all my tradesmen. 
They are very nice about it. They charge him every 
month twenty per cent more than I have had. And 
hand it over to me when he's paid the bill. 

Emmeline {rising and concealing her condemnation). 
That must be humiliating. 

Martha. It's the only way I can preserve the sanc- 
tity of my home. And get decent clothes for my back. 

Emmeline (as the bell rings). That must be Mrs. 
Boyer. Shall I — 

Martha (dabbing her eyes and cheeks). Just a mo- 
ment. All right. 

Emmeline (opening door). Leonora. So ashamed 
to be late. 

Martha (as Mrs. Boyer comes in). Leonora Ash- 
ton! Are you Mrs. Boyer? 

Mrs. Boyer. Martha! (The ladies embrace rvarmly.) 

Emmeline. I thought you knew it. 

Martha. Surely I heard somewhere your name was 
Hilda. 

Mrs. Boyer. My middle name. I dropped the 
Leonora after college days. (Scrutinizing Martha.) 
Really, you know, seeing you again makes me feel like 
our old basket ball team. You remember you thought 
it unladylike for us to have a yell. Emmeline persuaded 



138 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

you that if we had athletic contests like the toys we 
must have everything else that went with them. {She 
sits upon sofa.) Before I say another word. I really 
must slip off my shoes. They always hurt me. But I 
can't go round with feet like a hippopotamus. 

Martha (sitting down beside her). If you don't 
mind^ Emmeline. Though these I have on are a world 
too large. 

Mrs. Boyer. Don't be a humbug, Martha. No men 
present. 

Emmeline {sitting down beside her and slipping off 
her shoes also). It's a great relief. 

Martha. Poor mother was scandalized when mine 
began to — to expand. 

Mrs. Boyer. I bet we have gym and basket ball to 
thank for that. Those shapeless sneakers. 

Emmelixe. It's girls doing things instead of sitting 
at home embroidering. Glove-makers and shoemakers 
say the average is a size larger. 

Martha {tremulously). Where is it going to stop! 

Emmelixe {shrugging). The price we pay for better 
health and stronger constitutions. 

Mrs. Boyer. More than they're worth. 

Martha. I told you then that athletics were unlady- 
like. I don't care what they say, I shan't let my daugh- 
ter go in for them. 

Emmelixe. There's one consolation. If women have 
to have bigger hands and feet, they can force men to 
change their ideal of feminine beauty. All the Greek 
goddesses had big hands and feet. {Complacently ap- 
praising the furs of the other two.) How well our furs 
go together ! We look like three hunters of old, don't 
we? Dressed in the beasts they killed. 

Martha {with a gasp). Hilda! You are the one 
who is suing the old gentleman for breach of promise. 

Mrs. Boyer {laughing). Going to be shocked like 
Emmeline } 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 139 

Martha. The publicity of it! To expose one's in- 
timate and sacred things in the market place. But of 
course after spoiling your chances for two years he 
owed you something. 

Emmeline. What right has she to his money? 

Mrs. Boyer (gaily). He's a man^ isn't he? 

Emmeline. What right has she? 

Martha. Wouldn't she have a right if he had mar- 
ried her? He almost married her. He kept other men 
from marrying her_, didn't he? If you lease an apart- 
ment and don't take it_, the landlord says you kept other 
people from taking it and makes you pay. I know be- 
cause I've tried to break my lease and couldn't. I saw 
an apartment I liked ever so much better and for less 
money, too. 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing). Believe in alimony, don't 
you Emmeline? Didn't you write a book on that? 

Martha. Do you get alimony? And run your home 
to suit yourself? Aren't you lucky? But I don't think 
you're quite fair — if I may say so — in wanting alimony 
and breach of promise too. 

Mrs. Boyer. Silly, as if I could get it! But I'd 
better be on with the new love before I'm off with the 
old, hadn't I? 

Martha. Oh, I am relieved! So long as you don't 
have both at once. A woman can't be too scrupulous in 
such matters. 

Emmeline. Alimony, yes. Only under certain cir- 
cumstances, however. But you have no children and 
you have your own income, you have not sacrificed your 
youth and strength to a man. If you have to go to 
work, you wouldn't have the slightest handicap by rea- 
son of your marriage. 

Martha. Why, Emmeline, you're positively immoral. 
Heaven knows I don't believe in divorce. What God 
has joined together let no man put asunder. Except a 
legal separation for life of course. But if a man can 



140 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

get quit of a woman without its costing him anything, 
what's to prevent him doing it over and over again? 

Mrs. Boyer. It's a social duty women owe. Why 
shouldn't the cad I married pay me money? Do you 
know what he did ? We agreed to get a divorce in France 
because it's easier. So I bought a place over there, and 
the French law allowed him to keep half of it. Now in- 
stead of supporting only his mistress, I'm supporting a 
second wife beside. 

Martha {rising with decision and stepping out over 
her shoes). There comes a time when logic must go to 
the wall. I don't care if women are mixing up State 
and Home! I don't propose to start any campaign 
which will make it easier for men to dodge their mar- 
riage ties. 

Emmeline (quietly). I told you I was surprised. 
{To Mrs. Bayer.) How did you come to be in it? 

Mrs. Boyer {laughing). An idle rich woman must 
do something these days. A cause keeps her before the 
public far better than charity bazaars. 

Martha. Come with us. Protect the sanctity of the 
Home. 

Mrs. Boyer, No lost causes for me, I want to blaze 
a trail. 

Emmeline {coolly). You would damage any cause 
you undertook. A rich woman who levies a tax upon 
one man because he gave her his name and wants an 
indemnity from another because he didn't. 

Mrs. Boyer {rising energetically and stepping out 
over her shoes). Stuff! Men have enslaved and ex- 
ploited us since history began. We have a right to get 
even whenever we get a chance. Precious few chances 
we have. 

Emmeline. I grant women have been slaves through- 
out history. And so they have for their birthright the 
typical slave morality. Anything they can appropriate 
of the master's they think is theirs by rights. But be 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 141 

logical. A woman cannot exist;, any more than a na- 
tion, half-slave and half-free. You refuse to go back 
to the old days when you were slave? Then be entirely 
free. But being free as a man, be as honest as a man. 
Give up the old slave morality. 

Martha. Free as a man? Men break their mar- 
riage vows whenever they want to. Which is gen- 
erally. 

Emmeline (seeing an opportunity to tangle her up). 
Well? 

Martha (almost in tears). And women don't want 
to. They ought to want to or men ought not to want 
to. That's the only way there can ever be equality. 

Emmeline. Well? 

Martha (helpless at being forced to pursue her 
point). Women should either have no sentiment in mar- 
riage at all or men should have more. It's this half and 
half business which sacrifices women. They were 
brought up to have sentiment about marriage and men 
to laugh at it. (With the fervor of discovery.) That's 
the trouble. Oh, Emmeline, can't you write a book about 
it? That would be a splendid new cause for us. I'm 
sure we can all join hands in it. 

Emmeline. Which side will you take? It's hopeless 
trying to change men. Two thousand years of senti- 
mentalizing haven't made them monogamous yet. Do 
you want to change women? 

Martha (aghast). I don't know what I want. I 
want something different. We women wear out our 
hearts and our lives in a forlorn hope. Battling to keep 
up a sentiment which men have grown tired of pretend- 
ing. Men don't believe in the home. And we women 
have got to try to save it. Even if you have profaned 
it with politics. 

Emmeline. Why have you got to save it? 

Martha. Emmeline ! Home is where mother is. 
The one sheltered oasis in the desert of the world. 



142 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Emmeline. Save it for men? You confess they 
don't believe in it^ and apparently you are right. Save 
it for women? You say their working and voting will 
ruin it, and apparently they intend to work and vote. 
Save it for the children? Apparently they leave it as 
soon as they are able. For whom then must you save 
it? Nobody seems to want to stay in it. 

Mrs. Boyer. Fiddlesticks! You're trying to saw oflp 
the limb you're sitting on. Abolish the home and you 
abolish the importance of women. 

Emmeline. Not if they work and vote. Besides, 
which is the more important? The woman a man's try- 
ing to marry or the woman after he gets her? 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing). You have me there. She'll 
always be important until man stops wanting to run 
after her. (Indicating flowers.) By the way, you seem 
to have considerable importance. 

Emmeline (suddenly noticing trellised pot, goes to 
it and holds up ribbon with surprise and delight.) Why! 

Mrs. Boyer. Sweet little trifle, isn't it? 

Martha. How could any florist have killed those 
roses with that ribbon! And such loads of it! 

Emmeline. Florist! This ribbon cost four dollars 
a yard. 

Mrs. Boyer (cattily). Fortunate you can wear it. 

Emmeline. Yes, I wanted one just like it for a 
gypsy costume, and decided I couldn't afi'ord it, I sup- 
pose he would have been shocked if I had let him buy 
it for me. But now he'll be complimented if I wear it 
instead of throwing it away. Aren't men amusing crea- 
tures? (Indicating the rest of the floral exhibit.) And 
isn't it frightful what they spend for flowers ! 

Martha (sighing). No one spends any on me. 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing shrewdly). When they might 
spend it on something that didn't fade so soon, you 
mean, Emmeline ? By the way, who was that interesting 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 143 

young man who let me in? Doing something for you, 
I believe? 

Emmeline (^carefully casual, suspicious at the patness 
of the inquiry). He came here to inspect something 
or other. Occasionally he's fixed some things for me 
since. 

Mrs. Boyer. Seems to know you rather well. 

Emmeline. A simple, naive nature very interesting 
to me as a novelist. 

Mrs. Boyer. Well, if he's as handy as he's good- 
looking^ I'd let him inspect me often. 

Martha. Oh, Emmeline ! Will you let him fix things 
for me? Everything is out of order, and I simply can't 
afi'ord it. 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing). Go it, Martha! Get all 
you can out of them I say. Little enough, heaven 
knows ! 

Emmeline (vigorously). Girls! It's disheartening 
to try to do anything for women when that's their gen- 
eral attitude. Here you are both of you. Parasites. 
Each in your own way, one in the open, one in secret. 
But each getting all she can by the means at her dis- 
posal — fair or foul. I grant you that men never did, 
do not yet, play fair themselves. But how are we ever 
going to mend matters? If you women aren't willing 
to be honest even when you get the chance! 

Martha (aghast). Honest! 

Mrs. Boyer. You are, of course. 

Emmeline. I work for my living, I owe nothing to 
any man, I pay for what I get. If a man invites me 
to dinner_, I always ask him for a cup of tea. 

Martha (somewhat terrified at her vigor). Oh, a 
gentleman was coming at five. 

Emmeline (sharply). What do you mean? I told 
you so. 

Martha. No, someone phoned. I thought it was 
you and answered. 



144 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Emmeline. Answered? Who was it? 

Martha {increasingly nervous^. I don't know. I 
thought it was the one Mr. Atkinson spoke of. 

Emmeline (going to door and calling). Annie! 
(Coming away again after a moment.) I'd like to know 
how Mr. Atkinson knew about a gentleman coming to 
tea. 

Mrs. Boyer (laughing) . Or what gentleman. (The 
hell rings. The ladies all dive for their shoes.) Must 
be inconvenient for people to come without sending 
their names up. 

Martha (whispering apologetically). We'll go at 
once of course. 

Emmeline. I may want you to help me out. (She 
opens the door to Edmund.) 

Edmund (hanteringly). Good afternoon, Emme- 
line. 

Emmeline (without cordiality). Good afternoon. 

Edmund. Well, mayn't I come in? 

Emmeline. You can't see me without phoning, you 
know. But Mrs. Garton wants to speak to you. (As 
Edmund enters and Martha grows more fluttered). To 
get that message straight, Martha. 

Martha. I — quite forgot what gentleman you said 
was coming to tea. 

Edmund. I didn't say. 

Emmeline (tartly). Well, who is it? 

Edmund. I hope I am. For one. 

Martha (helplessly) . But I phoned someone else. 

Edmund (exultantly). Someone else'? That makes 
- — two of us then. 

Emmeline (frigidly). Exactly. 

Edmund. Not exactly. That is, apparently, yovi 
didn't figure on me. But now I've happened in? 

Emmeline. When I want people to tea, I usually 
ask them. 

Edmund. You're embarrassing me. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 145 

Mrs. Boyer {gaily). Perhaps you're embarrassing 
her. You've asked yourself. Martha has asked some- 
one — ^name unknown. Maybe Emmeline took the lib- 
erty. 

Edmund. Did you_, Emmeline? 

Emmeline. Perhaps it was presumptuous. 

Edmund. That makes — three of us ! And at least 
two of them unexpected. 

Emmeline {pointedly). At least two. 

Martha {nervously). I must be going. 

Mrs. Boyer. Shall I take this young man along with 
me? 

Edmund. I shall stay till I'm put out, Mrs. Boyer. 

Martha {shaking hands). I'm sure I had the best 
intentions. 

Mrs. Boyer {at door). Good-bye. Better come 
along. Oh, by the way, he split the difference. {They 
go.) 

Edmund. Why don't you tell me to go, if I'm in the 
way. 

Emmeline. I thought I'd let it dawn on you. 

Edmund. That's a good idea. 

Emmeline. Besides, I wanted to ask you a question. 
Did Annie let you in when you first came? Who did? 

Edmund. Garrity. 

Emmeline. Oh! How soon did he leave? 

Edmund. Not before we'd — chatted a while. 

Emmeline {suppressing her annoyance). Well, why 
don't you ask me who he is? 

Edmund. I know. A good-looking giant you think 
you're educating. You're really making him unfit for 
any other woman. You don't want him yourself and 
you're keeping him from everybody else. Oh, I don't 
blame you unduly. Every woman likes to own a man, 
whom she can order to come and go as she pleases. Es- 
pecially if he shakes his chain every now and then and 
growls fiercely. They don't like 'em too tame. 



146 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

Emmeline (suppressing her annoyance). I thought 
I told you always to phone when you wanted to call. 

Edmund. I came on business. The same that brings 
me now. 

Emmeline. And that is.^ 

Edmund. To ask you to marry me. Before the rush 
begins. 

Emmeline. Must we go into that again? I told 
you while I had my book to finish I couldn't have any- 
thing on my mind. 

Edmund. So you said a year ago. Then you began 
this book before you'd finished the other one. Will you 
marry me? 

Emmeline. I really can't dispose of a little trifle like 
that when I'm expecting another man at any moment? 
Either way, it will spoil my tea. 

Edmund. My dear Emmeline, I don't care if you 
expect one man or five, I demand an immediate an- 
swer. 

Emmeline. B-r-r-r-h! And what if you don't get 
it? 

Edmund. Then I'll get out. For good. 

Emmeline (deciding on other tactics). The usual 
masculine hold-up. I know we'd come to it sooner or 
later. 

Edmund. Now that it's later, take me or leave me. 

Emmeline. Are you really serious? 

Edmund. Grimly. 

Emmeline. What right have I ever given you to dic- 
tate like this? (He snorts.) Have I ever led you on? 

Edmund. You haven't exactly shoved me off. 

Emmeline. Two years ago you came to me with a 
man's usual lordly ideas about a woman. She was his 
to choose if he wanted her — ^he would see if she'd suit. 
When you decided that you did want me, of course I 
must take you at once. How about letting me see if 
you'll suit? 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 147 

Edmund. Two years is long enough to find out. 

Emmeline. We haven't the quick wits of the lords 
of creation. 

Edmund. Because you're trying to decide on so many 
at once. And each one with nobody in his mind but you. 

Emmeline (scornfully). That's likely! 

Edmund. I should say it was. No man has time 
and money enough to run after two women at once. Not 
if she's on to her job. 

Emmeline. Do you mean to be offensive.^ 

Edmund. Merely defensive. Do you marry me or 
do you not.f* 

Emmeline. Young man, march. 

Edmund. Not before an answer. 

Emmeline! (gaily). Shall I call a policeman? 

Edmund. Emmeline, if I go out of that door I'm not 
coming back again. 

Emmeline. You can't bully me into an answer. (He 
starts to the door determinedly. She goes on more coax- 
in gly.) I haven't time for an answer just now with 
someone coming to tea. 

Edmund (stopping). To tea? Oh, yes. (He comes 
bacJc.) Emmeline, I adore you. Wouldn't you find life 
stupid with one of your millionaire duffers? 

Emmeline. How do you like my new hat? I al- 
ways depend on your taste. For me. You haven't any 
for yourself. I'm ashamed of those gay ties of yours. 

Edmund (critically). Charming. But — what's the 
use of having such glorious black hair if you're going to 
hide it. That red rose should hang down on your pink 
ear. (He pulls himself up.) No, you don't! Do you 
marry me or do you not? 

Emmeline. You really must be going. 

Edmund (sharply). Goodbye, then! (He strides to 
the door.) 

Emmeline. Now, Bunny dear! Don't be unreason- 
able. I can't answer you all at once. (Alluringly.) 



148 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

You're the last man in the world I could answer all at 
once. 

Edmund. Darling! (With a swift change.) What 
do you mean by that? 

Emmeline. Can't you guess? 

Edmund. No. That's why you said it. 

Emmeline. You're as stupid as the rest of them. 

Edmund (wildly). Trickery! You women haven't 
an honest bone in your body. 

Emmeline (changing her tactics). Please go. 

Edmund. Not until I have my answer. 

Emmeline. My answer is no. 

Edmund (blankly). No? (He starts to go, then 
comes back.) Then I won't go until — something else 
happens. 

Emmeline (icily). Good afternoon. (She goes into 
room. Edmund, after a moTnent of uncertainty in which 
he feels foolish, picks up his hat and goes toward door. 
The bell rings. Emmeline at once appears; and speaks 
softly, quickly, and coaxingly.) Bunny dear, don't be 
mean and do help me. I have a particular reason for 
my being alone when he comes. (With confusion, of 
the attractiveness of which she is quite aware.) It's 
nothing at all and I'll explain to you later. But won't 
you go out through the kitchen — after I let him in? 
(He hesitates. ) When I have humbled myself like this ? 
Aren't you going to show your appreciation — that I've 
asked you what I wouldn't ask any other man in the 
world. (Edmund comes to her at the door as if about 
to embrace her in his flight, but she dodges and prettily 
accelerates his departure.) Please! (She quickly runs 
to the mirror as the bell rings again, takes off her hat 
and opens the door. To Gareth, who has left off his 
overalls.) Oh! what is it? You're always forgetting 
and leaving things. 

Gareth (with suppressed excitement). I haven't 
forgotten anything. I want to see you. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 149 

Emmeline. You can't come in. 

Gareth. Yes^ I will. {He enters.^ 

Emmeline (noting his seriousness). I am expecting 
someone. 

Gareth. Yes. Which of them are you going to 
marry ? 

Emmeline. Them.'* 

Gareth. The whippersnapper — or the other fellow? 

Emmeline. What is this? 

Gareth. Are you going to marry — either of them? 

Emmeline. What right have you to talk in this way? 

Gareth. Will you marry me? 

Emmeline. You ! 

Gareth. I love you. I can't think of anything else 
but you. I'm mad for you. 

Emmeline. Are you going to spoil our wonderful 
friendship ? 

Gareth. Friendship ? You always knew I loved you. 

Emmeline. I didn't. That is 

Gareth. You always knew I worshipped you. 

Emmeline. Y-yes. But worship is not love. I 
hoped that you would see that you must — keep it from 
becoming love. 

Gareth. That's a lie. (Shoched at himself for an 
instant.) What have you kept me dangling round for? 
I'll tell you. Because it interested you to see me in 
love with you. To see me fumbling about and wonder- 
ing how far I'd dare go and how I'd go about it. Be- 
sides^ I was — useful. 

Emmeline (proudly and coldly). I think^ Gareth, 
you'd better leave. 

(Gareth looks at her despairingly. But as he has 
been somewhat appalled at his own daring, he turns to 
go. At the door he pauses.) 

Gareth (pleading like a child). If you're sending 
me away like this_, just because you think he might be 
coming — there's plenty of time. To settle this right 



150 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

now. I guess I know all there is to know about how 
crazy you would be to marry me. But that ain't the 
point. I've known that all along and so have you. And 
I wanted it to go on and so did you. What right had 
you to keep me — all raw like this } If you didn't intend 
to marry me — or — or — ^wouldn't ever love me? Are you 
going to.^ That's what's got to be settled right now. 

Emmeline. I think^ Gareth^ you had better go. 

Gareth. All right. But I'll never come back. 

(The hell rings. Both are, for their different reasons, 
arrested by it. Then Emmeline walks into room right. 
After hesitating Gareth opens the door. To Edmund.^ 

Edmund {coming in and looking quickly around for 
Emmeline). So you're the first? 

Gareth. For two cents I'd lick the life out of you, 
you shrimp ! Right here ! 

Edmund. Come, get on your company manners. I 
see you've changed your tie for the tea-party. 

Gareth. You be damned! {Chuckling angrily). 
And your damned tea-party too ! So that's what you 
came nosing round for, did you? 

Emmeline {appearing at door, in a withering tone). 
What was it — you came nosing round for, Mr. Atkinson ? 

Edmund {coolly). Because as I opened the kitchen 
door, to scuttle out as requested, I saw who your caller 

was. After a turn about the block, I came back to 

{He pauses.) ■ 

Emmeline. Well? 

Gareth. You needn't worry about what you came 
back for. There ain't going to be any tea-party. 

Emmeline and Edmund. What? 

Gareth {with a mixture of pride and alarm.). I 
stopped them all at the street door. When they got out 
of their taxies! Told them I was the doctor and Annie 
had scalded herself all over and was going to the hospi- 
tal. The five of them and their taxies! The whole fu- 
neral! {Edmund cannot restrain a hurst of laughter.) 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 151 

Emmeline. The whole five of them? 

Edmund. I invited them here this afternoon. They 
phoned while he was here working and I was here wait- 
ing — for you. Now what are you going to do about 
it.f^ 

Emmeline (icily). May I ask what we did it for? 

Edmund. To see them. I had met one of my un- 
known rivals. Oh^ yes_, rivals ! I wanted to look over 
the others and figure out my chances. {Unable to re~ 
strain a chuckle.) And now Garrity has upset the pot. 

Gareth (furiously). Thank God she's got no use 
for you either! 

Emmeline {in a low voice tremulous with anger). 
Both of you — gentlemen — had better go at once. 

Gareth {pleadingly). Emmeline! 

Emmeline. And not come back again. 

Gareth {after a moment, slowly, sadly, and passion- 
ately). Suits me. Since I met you you've held me up 
for everything. My time_, my money, my thoughts. I 
haven't owned anything about myself or had a plan of 
my own. And you knew it. What did you expect to 
give in return? Emmeline, you ain't — honest! {He 
goes.) 

Emmeline {to Edmund after a moment). One word 
before you go. I hope you don't believe — there's been 
anything between us. {He is silent.) Say so. 

Edmund. Of course not. 

EmmeliNe. Thank you. 

Edmund. Thank me? Emmeline, much as I love 
you, I would think better of you if there had been. 

Emmeline. How dare you! 

Edmund {very gravely). A woman has no right to 
interfere like that with a man's life unless she intends — 
to love him or to marry him. 

Emmeline {imperiously). What do you mean? 

Edmund. You know very well what I mean. You 
condemn the tactics of women well enough when you 



152 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

want to. But you don't attack them for what you are 
doing yourself. Selling your femininity. 

Emmeline {angrily^. Selling? 

Edmund. For flowers, theatre tickets, suppers, din- 
ners, motor rides. You won't bother with a man unless 
he gives you a good time. But you take care to hold out 
hopes to him, hopes that make us spend more on you 
than we can afford. And what do you give us in re- 
turn.^ Your society. Your society, in which you pru- 
dently and deliberately dangle before our eyes, the eyes 
of purchasers you mean to cheat, what another kind of 
girl sells honestly, in the open market and without sen- 
timent. You're both of you peddlers and she's the 
straight one. Sometimes, in spite of your calculations, 
love sweeps you off your feet and then you're ashamed 
to go on haggling. Then no matter whether you marry 
the man or run away with him, you become honest for 
once. 

Emmeline. Honest! Honest! You prate of being 
honest! After centuries of oppression, of brutality, of 
inhumanity in order to keep us your slaves, 

Edmund. Oh, yes, I'll admit it. And it has made 
you what it always makes people. A race of tricksters 
and traders. Oh, I don't blame woman in general. She 
has done what she was forced to do. But you women 
who by reason of education, industry, profession, talent 
have raised yourselves out of the pit a man-made civili- 
zation dumped the whole of you into 

Emmeline. Who no longer need eat out of a man's 
hand and fawn upon him for our next day's food ! 

Edmund. Yes. Are you any better than the rest of 
them? No, you are tricksters and traders still. A lit- 
tle more subtle, that is all. Look at your attitude. 
There's nothing honest about it. You want to be treated 
as superiors and inferiors at the same time. We must 
look up to you and yet we must protect you. Give you 
the privileges of the weak and the rights of the strong. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 153 

The woman who was frankly a clinging helpless vine 
was far more honest. She never dreamt of anything but 
privileges^ she knew she was weak and had to be pro- 
tected. She knew she had but one thing to sell and she 
got herself to market as quickly as possible. And 
thanked God if the man who bought her was decent to 
her. 

Emmeline. Decent? You've never been decent to 
us. Now you magnificent men want to play fair, as you 
call it, for the first time in history. And you wonder 
why women can't chuck up at once the experience of 
ages. After being for thousands of years only what 
civilized man has forced them to be, dependents in the 
home or outlaws on the street. And with your thou- 
sands of years of opportunity you're not so civilized 
after all. We've still got to fight every step of the way. 
With the only weapons your superior strength has not 
been able to wrench from us. Trickery and sex. What 
taught us to use them? The need of competing with 
each other for you, the only means of livelihood you 
left us. Now we make you compete for us, when we're 
lucky enough to be attractive to you. When we're not, 
we starve. On the miserable wages you give us. 

Edmund. Wages? Look what you make. 

Emmeline. You know very well I'm talking of 
women in general. 

Edmund. You know very well I'm talking of you in 
particular. What do you spend on me? 

Emmeline {astounded). You? 

Edmund. Absurd, isn't it? But just because you're a 
woman I must spend on you. Pay for your society. 
Why must I? What do you pay for mine? 

Emmeline {sparring for rvind). For yours? 

Edmund. All well enough when women didn't make 
their living. But now that they do, why should we go 
on spending? Thafs a tradition you don't want to lay 
hands on. Why? 



154} The Craft of the Tortoise Act iT 

Emmeline. Because — ^because 



Edmund. God knows ! The same reason, I suppose, 
that when a man breaks his engagement he's an un- 
mitigated cad. But when a woman breaks hers, she's 
wisely found out her mistake in time. Well, what do 
you spend on me? 

Emmeline (with triumph and with relief). I dress 
for you. That's what I spend. 

Edmund (staggered at her nerve). For me? 

Emmeline. Yes, it takes all my money to dress. To 
make myself charming. Men demand it. 

Edmund (derisively). And if we didn't, you wouldn't. 

Emmeline (spying a better point). Yes. Woman 
demands it herself. Because she has an instinct man 
does not possess. The .eternal and indestructible instinct 
for beauty. The shop girl denies herself a crust to buy 
a pitiful bit of finery. 

Edmund. To catch the eye of a man. To dress her- 
self for market. 

Emmeline. She would do it anyway. Her heart 
craves beauty. Even if she pays for it with her poor 
starved body. Where would beauty be if it weren't for 
women? It is we, we who have kept alive the charm, 
the fragrance, the color of life. Would you like to see 
it go ? Think how dingy and drab the world would be if 
we didn't beautify it with our clothes. Look at what 
you men have come to. Once you dressed even better 
than women but you were too lazy, too selfish, too pur- 
blind to keep it up. Year after year your clothes have 
become more sober, more grubby. Until now they're 
just dry goods with pockets in them. Uniforms. All 
alike, no distinction, no variety, no individuality, no 
charm. Where is your ancient splendor and beauty? 
Why, you've nothing left but your necktie. You said 
that in exchange for your dinner I give you only a cup 
of tea 

Edmund. I didn't I 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 155 

Emmeline (with a moment of confusion). You might 
as well. But I give you with it a gown that has cost me 
hours of thought and. time. I give you delight for the 
hungry eye — hungry for the beauty you don't know how 
to create for yourself — refreshment for the humdrum 
mind, food for the weary spirit. 

Edmund. You are altogether adorable. 

Emmeline. But these little things I have to save and 
scrimp for. I can't feast your spirit and your stomach 
too. Better a cup of tea where beauty is than a stalled 
ox with ugliness. (Coaxingly.) Confess now, don't my 
clothes afford you a great deal of pleasure? Even when 
you're too stupid to see it.^* 

Edmund. Darling! You are exquisite, radiant. To 
keep you so I'd spend every cent I made. {He tries to 
take her impetuously in his arms. She partly avoids 
him.) 

Emmeline. Aren*t you sorry you spoke to me like 
that? 

Edmunb. I was a brute. 

Emmeline. Just the usual, blundering, thick-witted, 
dull-eyed, earthly male. 

Edmund. Adorable creature of air and fire, will you 
marry me? 

Emmeline (still evading his embrace). I'm glad you 
wore that tie. Bunny, to ask me in. I like you in black. 
With your eyes, you ought never to wear anything live- 
lier than gray. 

Edmund (retreating). Aha! What has become of 
our beauty and splendor? You've got at last what 
you've been working for all these years. One by one 
we've left off the silver buckles, the silk stockings, the 
purple knee-breeches, the flowered waistcoats, the plum- 
colored coats, the ruffles, the laces, the hats with sweeping 
plumes. Why? You made us. With your serpent's 
tongue you hissed into our ears that they were unmanly, 
effeminate. That's been your little game all along. Now 



156 The Craft of the Tortoise Act IV 

you've got us just where you want us. Look at the opera, 
at dinners_, dances. We're all black and white, like a 
row of whiskey bottles with labels on them. To set 
you off. With your shimmer and color and warmth and 
sparkle and glow. Men made you weak in order that 
they might appear strong. Well, you've got your re- 
venge at last. You've made us ugly that you might be 
the more beautiful. 

Emmeline. Ridiculous ! 

Edmund. Ridiculous? When did you begin to fleece 
us of our last shred of gaiety and distinction? When 
did silk stockings go out? When was the last Beau 
Brummel? I'll tell you. Just when the first woman 
began to talk about woman's rights. 

Emmeline. Absurd! There's no connection! 

Edmund. All the connection in the world. You saw 
in that damnably tricky way of yours that if you got 
your rights, you'd have to support yourselves and then 
your position as spender for man would vanish. Oh, 
doubtless you didn't figure it out ! But your instinct 
warned you you'd have to get something to put in its 
place. Even your instincts are dishonest. So, syste- 
matically, deliberately, you discouraged our fineries. 
For that very purpose. So that you could corner all the 
beauty and charm of the world and manufacture a new 
reason for men's spending money on you when the old 
one should give out. Now it's rainbows for women, uni- 
forms for men. {Striking his chest.) Lit up with black 
ties! 

Emmeline. Bunny, you're positively epic! 

Edmund. Trickster, peddler, sophist, serpent, god- 
dess, divinity, beauty — will you marry me? 

Emmeline. I'll see. 

Edmund. Come out to dinner with me. While you're 
seeing. 

Emmeline. I have an engagement. {Giving him his 
hat.) You really must go now. 



Act IV The Craft of the Tortoise 157 

Edmund {trying to embrace her, she eludes"). Will 
you tell me tomorrow? At the latest? 

Emmeline. Maybe. Or the day after. Goodbye. 

Edmund {at door). I love you. 

Emmeline. You're a dear boy. And so amusing! 

Edmund {rvith good-humored exasperation). Go to 
the devil. {He exits.) 

Emmeline {going to the mantel, she takes up the rib- 
hon. Then goes to the phone). Cortland 725. {She 
reaches for a chocolate out of the candy box and nibbles 
it.) Hello^ I want to speak to Mr. Garrity. {Takes 
another nibble.) Hello^ that you Gareth? So glad I 
got you before you left. You were a dear naughty boy 
to buy me that ribbon after all. And so clever of you 
to outwit me in that way. Oh don't be cross^ you funny 
nice Bunny ! Don't you want to come round on your 
way from work and cook dinner? All right. I'll make 
the salad. Suppose you get a porterhouse steak and 
some nice fresh mushrooms. 

CURTAIN. 



I 



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